It’s been gray and wet all week so I haven’t taken any photos of my latest finished quilt yet. I’m going to take some tonight, gray and all, because I’m tired of waiting for sunshine — but in the meantime, here’s something else quilt-related. While I was working on this one, my mind wandered through all the things I’ve learned about quilting over the past 3 years.
My skills have definitely improved a lot, but there are also several things I do that many would consider “cheating” or “wrong.” Here’s a list of several reasons why, despite my daydreams, I will probably never sew professionally:
I am alllll about the shortcut. Quilting takes patience, but I am not always patient. If I can figure out a way to save time, I usually will.
I avoid pins when at all possible. Pins are annoying. It takes forever to put them in, and then you have to take them out again while sewing, and on top of that they are pokey (obviously). I do a lot of “freehand” piecing, preferring to just keep things in line as I sew instead of wasting time with pins. And when I do need them, I use wonder clips instead — so much easier and faster!
I’m too impatient to press. There’s ironing, and then there’s pressing. For quilting, you’re supposed to press — which is basically just lifting the iron up and down, because moving from side to side as you would when ironing a shirt can distort the fabric and ruin all your perfectly measured and cut pieces. But man, pressing is annoying and time-consuming. I rub that iron all over the freaking place! (And for the record, yes, it can slightly distort my pieces but I can usually overcome that when piecing.)
I spray baste. I basted my first quilt the traditional way, with a lot of pins, and didn’t have any issues when quilting straight lines from border to border. But when I wanted to quilt zig zags on my second quilt, turning the quilt in the sewing machine led to all kinds of nasty shifting of the layers. I discovered spray basting and haven’t looked back since! (I do still use a few pins as you can see above, but only as a safety net.) Spray basting also means fewer pins to remove while quilting — bonus!
I am too lazy to sew binding by hand. I’ve complained several times about how my machine binding never turns out quite as pretty as I’d like, even after 3 years of practice. There’s an easy solution to that — sew it down by hand — but apparently my laziness/impatience outweighs my perfectionist tendencies in this arena. If I ever decide to enter a quilt in a show, I guess I’ll have to do it by hand but until then it’s imperfect machine binding for me.
I usually press my seams to the side. I’ve seen a lot of people recommend that you press seams open to help them lie flatter in the finish product, but pressing them open takes a lot more time and I always seem to singe my fingers in the process. So I almost always press to the side. (One notable exception is that I do usually press them open when paper piecing; otherwise you’re likely to end up with a lot of bulk in spots where several seams come together.)
I buy some of my fabric from Joann’s. I do buy a lot of my fabric online these days and choose collections from quality manufacturers, but sometimes I have a specific need and don’t want to wait (or attempt to color match online, which is really tough). Yeah, yeah, I could patronize one of my local quilt shops…but it’s just so much easier to head to Joann’s. I know they’ll have a huge selection and I can probably use a coupon. And while the quality of their fabrics sometimes isn’t as good, it’s worked fine for me so far.
I don’t like a lot of the “cool” fabrics. A lot of the Cotton + Steel prints, which are hugely trendy right now, don’t appeal to me. Neither do most Anna Maria Horner prints. Or Amy Butler.
And there you have it — all my dirty little secrets about what I do “wrong” when quilting.
