Quilting Mistakes and How to Fix Them….Part I

Everyone makes mistakes.  It’s true.  If you’re human, stuff is going to happen.  And if you’re a quilter, you may as well determine that some … blunders are part and parcel of the art.  One of my goals for this year’s blog is to bring you into my studio (or at least as close as I could get) and discuss what I do and why.  This week, I want to tell you about some of the mistakes I have made (as well as a few of my quilting friends admitted to me they made) and how we corrected them.

•  Sewing too long.  There are times when everything in your quilt room will flow together.  The seams are a perfect quarter inch.  Netflex is showing four of your most favoritest movies.  Needles aren’t breaking, the fabric is beautiful, and you found your preferred wine on sale this week, so adult beverages are not a problem.  You could sew for hours.  And hours.  Perhaps you do.  But somewhere around the third or fourth hour, you start making rookie mistakes.  Suddenly your half-square triangles aren’t the right size, or your seams go wonky.  The flow stops.  You get irritated at the quilt and at yourself and wonder how the evening could end so badly when it started out so great.

The answer is easy.  You’ve sewn too long.  Even though we love our craft and could (and do) sit behind a machine for hours, after a while, we need a break – both our bodies and our minds.  It’s not good to sit so long in one position and our brains need some time to do mindless things.  Through the years I’ve learned my max sitting and sewing time is three hours.  I need to get up, move, and hydrate.  Do something mindless for a while, or if it’s late, go to bed. 

The key to correcting this mistake is to find out what’s your limit is.  Is it one hour or two?  Perhaps it’s forty-five minutes.  Whatever it is, take note of it and get up from the machine before you reach your limit.  You’ll leave and return to your project with a much better attitude than if you exceed your limit and keep pushing yourself.

• Consistently making the wrong size block.  There are a couple of ways to correct this mistake.  The first one is to invest in a quarter-inch foot (also called a Quilter’s Foot). 

When you line the outer edge of the foot up with the fabric, or have the fabric next to the phalange, you’re well on your way to making the correct size block.  If you don’t have a Quilter’s Foot, measure from your needle over ¼-inch and mark that spot with a piece of painter’s tape or a marker.  Line your fabric up with that mark and sew. 

If you’re sewing a consistent ¼-inch seam and the blocks still aren’t the right size, the problem could lie in accurate cutting.  Measure a few pieces before you cut everything out.  For instance, if the pattern calls for twenty 4-inch squares, cut a couple out and measure them to make sure your cutting is accurate. 

• The fabric runs when you wash your quilt.  I’ve written blogs about this and my passion for pre-washing.  Personally, I have never had any fabric bleed or crock on any quilt when I’ve taken the time to prewash the fabric.  Prewashing was ingrained in me when I was a beginner quilter.  My teacher prewashed and emphasized why it was necessary.  To me, it’s as natural and important a part of quilting as the ¼-inch seam.  I bring the fabric home, toss it in the washer, hang it to dry, press it while it’s still barely damp, fold and store it or proceed to cut out what I need for a quilt.  If I add the fabric to my stash, I clip one corner off.  This tells me it’s prewashed and ready to rock and roll when I need it.  Prewashing pretty much guarantees the fabric will not shrink any more (or at least not much) and neither will the colors run.  If I’m iffy about a particular fabric – such as an over-dyed batik or a red, blue, or black material – I can use Retayne or Synthrapol. 

I also realize I seem to be in the minority.  Very, very few of my quilting friends prewash.  It’s an extra step.  It takes time away from the quilting process.  For those of you who decide not to prewash but still freak out about your fabric bleeding or crocking, wash your finished quilt in cold water, on a gentle cycle, and use three to five sheets of color catchers

in the wash.  Closely examine the quilt when you remove it from the washer. If you see areas of bleeding, repeat this process until the color catchers come out with no dye on them.  If there is no bleeding fabric, either let the quilt air dry or toss it in the dryer.  Do not put it in the dryer if there is fading, as the heat will set the areas where the material has bled onto another fabric, and you won’t be able to wash it out. 

• Free Motion Issues.  Okay, let’s just be honest.  Dropping those feed dogs and quilting your quilt on a domestic machine is just a little scary the first two or three times.  We are used to the feed dogs doing all the work for us, grabbing the wrong side of the fabric and pushing it over the feed dogs at a consistent rate so we have even stitches.  Once the dogs are dropped, all of that is up to us. 

I wish I could give you some formula like the Golden Ratio or Quilter’s Cake to make it easy-peasy, but I can’t.  What I can do is share with you the tools I use which have made free motion quilting easy and fun for me.  The first tool is practice.  Practice, practice, practice, and then practice some more.  Even though I have a long arm and use it, I still quilt small-ish quilts on my domestic machine.  And while the outcome may look similar between the two machines, the technique is definitely different (with a long arm you bring the foot to the ruler, and with a domestic machine you bring the ruler to the foot).  So practice is necessary in order to become fluent with either.  The easiest way I’ve found to foster practice is construct a few quilt sandwiches – no bigger than 18 x 18-inches square – and keep them by your machine.  Then each time you sit down behind your machine, they’re ready for you to take a few minutes, drop your feed dogs, and practice.

From personal experience, I really want you to know how beneficial this is.  First, the sandwich is smaller than most quilts, so it’s easier to control.  But this allows you to feel the rhythm of your machine without dealing with the bulk of a larger sandwich.  It’s easier to manipulate, allowing you to be comfortable while your discovering favorite fillers, how to quilt from dot to dot, and learn how to deal with tension issues.  And I always practice on a sandwich before I put a quilting stitch in my quilt.  I use the same thread on  top and in the bobbin that I’ll use on the quilt.  This way I can iron out tension issues, needle problems, or anything else before I quilt my quilt.  Second, this process allows you to build confidence and even be a little more daring on a sample than you would be on a quilt.  I’ve even drawn quilt blocks on a practice sandwich to experiment on how to quilt them. 

There are a few tools I feel are indispensable for free motion quilting. 

1. The Supreme Slider

This is a Teflon coated plastic sheet with a sticky backing and a hole in it.  Position the slider over your needle plate, with the hole over the feed dogs.  The sticky backing will hold it in place as you free motion your quilt.  The Teflon coating reduces friction to zero and makes moving that quilt sandwich oh-so-easy.  The Supreme Slider comes in regular, medium, and large sizes (although the large is getting harder to find).  Personally, I find the small works for most quilts, but I have a medium I use frequently, too.  They are slightly pricey, so you may want to begin with the medium or small and move to a larger size if you feel it’s necessary.  One word of caution, if you switch from free motion and your feed dogs lowered back to a foot which requires you to return your feed dogs to the up position, be sure to remove the Supreme Slider from your needle plate.  The feed dogs will chew a hole in it ask me how I know. 

• Water Soluble Marking Pens

Even the most experienced quilter will need to make some registration marks on their quilt sandwich.  Personally I really like the blue water-soluble pens the best for this.

• Mega Magic Bobbin Genies

What the Super Slider is for the quilt sandwich, the Mega Magic Bobbin Genies are for your bobbin.  These are ultra-slim and simply drop in your bobbin case and then your bobbin sits on top of it.  These help to eliminate backlash, birds’ nests, and eyelashes on the back of your quilt when your quilting (especially when you get good and fast at free motion).  I always keep one in my domestic sewing machine as well as my long arm. 

• Quilting Gloves

They simply help you keep a good, solid grip on your sandwich.  I also wear mine when adding borders to a large quilt.  The grippy stuff on the gloves helps me wrangle all the fabric bulk.

• The Right Machine Needle

I cannot emphasize enough how very, very important the right needle is.  And it’s also a personal decision.  Some quilters use Microtex needles, others use denim or top stitching needles.  It’s just crucial the needle has a sharp point which can cleanly pierce through the weight of a sandwich.  Some sewing machines have their own brand of quilting needle.  I quilt and sew on a Janome.  Janome has a line of “Blue-Tipped Quilting Needles” made for quilting.   I am always a bit skeptical about brand-specific equipment (many times producers will hike up the prices on brand-specific items because they’re supposed to be better than generic equipment).  However, I gave them a try and they are very, very good.  And while we’re on the subject of needles, it’s important to change your needle before and after quilting a quilt (you can get by without doing this if the quilt in question is a small one). 

• Running Out of Fabric.  This does happen on occasion.  As a matter of fact, it happened to me this week.  I thought I had purchased enough backing fabric for a quilt and was a half-yard short.  Fortunately, even though the fabric is a couple of years old, I was able to find it (thank you Shabby Fabrics).  Now I’m in a holding position waiting for it to arrive so I can quilt my quilt.  So how do you avoid this dilemma?

Read the pattern carefully.  Highlight the yardages, fat quarters, etc. needed.  Most good quilt patterns do allow for mistakes and will “pad” the amounts needed by several inches.  If I’m purchasing fabric for a specific quilt pattern, I’ll take sticky notes with me to the quilt shop.  As the sales associate cuts what I need, I will write the yardage and what it’s for on the sticky note and attach it to the fabric.  If I’m purchasing fabric online, I’ll print out what’s in my cart and write this same information next to each fabric.  This way I’m checking and double-checking my yardage.  With either, as soon as I have the specific fabric for a particular quilt, I cut the quilt out.  This way if I have made a mistake, I can rectify it then.  If I wait a year or longer (and sometimes even a few months) to buy the additional fabric I need, it may not be available.  If pulling from my stash, I measure twice to make sure I have enough and again, label the fabric.

Sometimes you can fudge on the amount.  For instance, if the pattern calls for a yard and you have ¾-yard, sometimes some skillful cutting can make up the difference – again remember most quilt patterns call for a smidge more than you need.  One tip I will offer concerns block-of-the-month programs.  If the program offers an “oops” package, it’s usually a good idea to purchase it.  The “oops” offers a few additional inches of each fabric used in the quilt just in case you mess up.  If you purchase a quilt kit, and cut it out as soon as you can.  This way if you’ve been shorted any fabric, you can contact the shop where the kit was purchased, and the material will still be available.  If you wait a year or two to begin the quilt and you find you’re short, it may be too late to get the fabric the kit calls for.

If you find you’re short and you’re in the middle of a project (like I am now), it’s frustrating.  If you have the name of the fabric (it’s on the selvedge), you can Google it and see if any is available.  A search will usually also include Etsy and Ebay (which has saved me from a few disasters).  If the fabric is found, purchase it.  If it can’t be found or it’s beyond your price range, make a design decision and change it up. 

And if you’re waiting for your fabric to arrive, simply move to another project during this time.

There still are quite a few mistakes to cover. We’ll finish this topic up next week. Until then, keep quilting!

From My Studio to Yours…

Love and Stitches,

Sherri and Felix

PS — My favorite “bleed” corrector for quilts is a mix of two parts Oxyclean to one part hydrogen peroxide. This does form a paste, but a paste is easier to control than a liquid which may make the bleeding worse. Dampen the area which has the fading on it and then with a cotton swab or soft brush (a baby toothbrush works GREAT), gently work the paste into the area. Let it set for a few minutes and wipe off. You may need to repeat this a few times, but generally it works pretty well.