For former seamstresses, such as myself, who are struggling with the teeny-tiny 1/4 inch seam allowance on quilts, doing the job of binding feels relatively familiar. Fold, press, pleat... when they talk about a "miter", it's very similar to a Dart. And the finishing stitch feels very much like that final hem that we put on a dress or a new pair of pants. Tiny little hand stitches, hoping not to have them show too much against the front of the dress... and the wonderful thing about the binding is that in a QUILT, unlike in most dresses, you've got several layers of fabric to work with. You can easily stitch through the first few parts of the quilt and not get anywhere near having your work show up on the "good" side.
On the other hand, most quilts (at least the non-framed variety) are meant to have both sides showing. Both used... neither should have little stray threads poking from a frayed edge of a seam!
The good news on the 1/4 inch seams is that if you've purchased fabric meant for quilting, at least, the feel of it is a little stiffer (it's not meant to softly conform to a body part, there is never any stretch at all in it, and even on the bias, it's a little less stretchy and soft than we're used to)... the fraying is also not as prolific. Which means, of cousre, that we have to be more exacting in our seams and cuts. We can't add a little ease into it (like we do when we put some ease in a bustline, for example) by simply letting our machines stray a little further into the seam line... and the quilter never seeks to nip in a waistline a tiny bit by making the curve of the path of the needle be just a little wider.
No, the straying that we are used to doing with our machines... the graceful curves along a seamline, the diminishing part of a point of a dart, the things we do to give a little more contour to our clothing, does not work well on a flat surface.
So we need to learn how to sew a straight line.
Luckily, it seems that most quilting groups are involved in joint quilting adventures. It sees the safest of these joint ventures to get involved with is about quilts for charity.
There are many projects... for children in hospitals (the Linus Project) ... or for wounded war heroes (Quilts of Valor), and many, may other similar projects. Most quilting organizations will pick one or several charity projects, and will share in the making of quilts to donate. The wonderful thing about the sharing of these projects is that there are many opportunities to learn the basic skills of quilting while doing this good work and there is almost no way your beginning quilting skills can really mess up the project enough to worry about it. There is always someone who can help you figure out what you did wrong and no one will ever get fussy that your points did not match!
Don't get me wrong, they'll TELL you that your points don't match (often with an offer of help to figure out how to do it better next time), but as everyone will tell you, the beauty of a quilt is often in it's errors, so this is a good way to learn that point. The recipients of your quilts will never know that you made the work harder for yourself by using the wrong type of needle, or that you should have mitered the corners rather than that awkward little tuck that you used... And you're not getting stuck on your own pet project! They will LOVE the place in their quilt where the point doesn't exactly match. As they are waiting for the pain medications to take effect from the latest and hardest physical therapy yet, they will be staring at your imperfectly matched star and they'll think, "I can't believe they made all these quilts for all us guys. Some nice lady, a perfect stranger, did this for me. I wonder what she was thinking when she realized that the star was a little lopsided..."
They will love it all the more for it's imperfections. Believe me. I inherited some quilt tops that a great, great aunt thought were not worthy of being finished, and I cherish them all the more for the imperfections. It is not the same with clothing. My mother made me many items of clothing in her lifetime, and I loved every item... but for some, the imperfections in the clothing make it impossible to wear. Imperfections in a quilt RARELY make them unsuitable for providing warmth and comfort!
Still... as nice as it is to be able to be imperfect, it's also nice to try to improve our skills... and this is what those charity quilts are great for.
A few weeks ago, I took on the binding of a Project linus quilt. A wonderful little quilt made of simple squares in primary colors. The binding had already been cut, the sandwich quilted and squared up, and all that needed to happen was for me to sew together the binding and get it ON to the quilt. I had only done one binding before, having accomplished the finishing in different ways before... So I pulled up a tutorial online and followed it exactly. Unfortunately, my sewing machine did not cooperate. I had to get it serviced.
At the sewing machine service shop, the lady taking in my machine asked, "did you know you were using embroidery thread?" Well, yes, I suppose I did, it was still there from a previous project and the color matched so I just used it. Hmm... could this be part of my problem?
So I said, "I may need to organize my thread a little better if I'm going to keep working on the variety of projects that I want to work on".
Was that an understatement or WHAT? I was sick of a growing collection of thread spools and bobbins that had no home, so they kept getting separated and moved around. With no dedicated sewing space for the past 8 years, I had managed to separate and move the pieces of my crafting/sewing supply cabinet over & over until it was unmanageable. I'm sure I have 3 or 4 spools each of every color in the rainbow, if only I could FIND them.
So when I went to pick up the machine after it was serviced, I wondered aloud to the saleslady, "I have always wanted one of those things that hangs on the wall and displays all the thread, so that I would have it all in the same place and easy to see". I'm glad I said that, because she said she doesn't like those things, they allow the thread to collect dust! BRILLIANT! If I've got so many different spools of thread that I've had some sitting in the closet for nearly 8 years, of course it would get dusty if I let it sit out.
So I went to JoAnne's... and $20 later, I had enough little plastic bins for all the CONES of thread I have as well as all the LITTLE spools... a little thinking and I realized that I can put a bobbin that's still full of thread on a spike close to the actual thread spool it came from, and there you go... suddenly, I've got a level of organization that I've not been able to achieve in 8 years! yippee!!!
Because the bins are plastic, I can see through to see the colors of thread, unlike my mother's old sewing basket... and because they have lids, I can avoid the dust issue.
Binding this little Linus Project quilt taught me a lot.
Oh yeah, and it also taught me how to miter the corner... a very cute little trick that makes the whole finishing process on the quilt a whole lot easier than I had originally thought.
From now on, no more stalling on the final touch... it seems binding is NOT a part of the quilting process that will hang me up any more! Binding, I have discovered... is EASY!
OK... next step... join in one of the "block of the month" or "heart block" adventures... where I sew JUST ONE BLOCK, according to the instructions of someone else, and either give it to them (a heart block for a sick quilting bee member, or a "thank you" block for an officer of the quilting club who is leaving her office), or enter into the lottery where I might get ALL the blocks to use as I choose...
I hear these block things can sometimes get picky. THey want seams pressed properly, and the right size, and points all in the right place... and exactly the right size... and colors need to be followed... well, basically, ALL directions need to be followed closely to do it right. And I understand that I can learn a LOT in these things, because if I do not do it right, someone will tell me... (hopefully in a nice way)... and if I WIN the lottery for the month's blocks, then I will have the chance to see how other people accomplished the task and see how exacting their standards are, see whether my own work measures up, as well as start to understand why one would want to follow all those pesky instructions... that the blocks where the seams are NOT pressed into the darker color start to show through, or the blocks that are cut too small or where the seams are too big, may not fit into the whole quilt... etc., etc...
Practice makes perfect, and quilting clubs, bees, guilds, projects... can provide plenty of opportunities for practice.
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