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Making the Quilt Sandwich

So now that you have peace all your rose together and you've completed your quote top it's time to make the quote sandwich the elusive cold sandwich that's my husband calls it and so in the interest of space I'm going to give you a condensed version of how I do it all of the resource is again are listed on the materials that come with the class so you'll remember our you'll be able to refer back to that for anything that you can't remember for these up cycle quilts I really love using sheets for the back there's no extra scenes that you have to so it's usually big enough and I love them so much in fact that if I can't find a sheet at the thrift store I will buy one to use because um it just makes it a lot easier you can get really creative with your bat with the backs of your quilts and if you have extra squares that you didn't use you can piece them into that and essentially the same way but for the demonstration for this one we're going to use a sheet this is just a cotton sheet that...

I have pre cut to the size that we need that normally you would make sure that you buy a sheet that's a little larger than the size of your quilt top and by a little larger I say I like to have two to four inches hanging out on all four sides of the quilt so that if you were making a fifty inch by fifty inch quilt I would safely suggest a fifty eight inch by fifty eighth inch quote back he could probably get away with a couple of inches on either side if you have a piece of fabric that you really love that she's not quite big enough but having it bigger than the quote front allows for some shifting that can happen so this is the back of your quote this is the first layer of the quote sandwich if this she had a print on it that I wanted to make sure you could see from the back of the quilt I would have the printed upside down the wrong side up so on this when he really can't tell but if there was a definite front and back you would want the back or the I'm sorry the front down on the surface now when you're sandwiching the layers of your quilt there's three layers there's this there's your quote batting which we'll talk about a minute and there's your cold top sometimes these khun b very large I have created a king size quote needless to say I do not have a surface in my home that is a king size anything except the bed and so you are dealing with large pieces of fabric and you need to just take that into consideration for our project, this is not too terribly large, but it's larger than the table, so I'm going to show you how I how I do that. So once I measure my finished quilt top and then cut down my quilt back to be the right size in this case fifty eight, roughly fifty eight by fifty eight tried to get the edge is super straight for you guys. So then you're going to use your handy payer's tape and depending on where I've known people who just knew their dining room table out of the way and actually use their floor, the just clean the floor and use that that you really do ideally want a surface that you can get most of it laid out flat on the idea behind the painter's tape is, you're not trying to make it taught like you don't wanna bounce a quarter off of it, you just don't want their be any wrinkles if you spread it like super taught when you tape it down, when you take that tape away, it may pull back together and create little pleats in the back, and you just don't want that, so I just use painter's tape and tape it down on the edge, and I would do this all the way around. And at the same time, I would smooth that as I ggo, so if I were taping this on the floor, I'd get one whole side. Then I would smooth this out, I would tape on the other side, and then I would do the two sides perpendicular, the two side wins, so let's, get that one side takes down. Does that make sense to everybody? It's this's also called basting your quilt it's not the most fun part of the process at all. I actually really don't like basting quilts, and it takes time because you wanted all the layers to be smooth, so just be prepared, it's just that, so you're going to do that all the way around. If you're confined to a table that's just not the same size as your quilt, then I would suggest that you do it in quarters. You fold it, you find like the rough center, you would do it like this and you would tape it down and then you can use binder clips toe hold it over on this side to the side of your table, you'd get this side basted and then you would move it up and you would do the same thing over again, there's one hundred ways to base that's the way I do it networks for me. So then once this is down wrong side facing up, you're going to put your quote batting down this is a layer that goes in between the top and the quote back, I prefer warm and natural batting there's a couple of different ones that you can get it big box craft stores, they come prepackaged in sizes, so you would just look at the size and make sure that you buy an adequate amount. Do you guys have a favorite batting that you like to use for warm, unnatural ahs? Well, lately I've been wanting to try wool, though, uh, there's a place called quilter's dream? Well, yeah, something like that. So I've heard good things about that well, and so I used to think when I made the baby quilt, I thought that that batting was poofy really poofy. But if you look at this there's really not a huge amount of loft in this, and I find that it's just you don't want super poofy because you can make you can get super poofy and there's actually a project in my book that uses three layers of batting inside to sort of make the squares poof up in the center, but I find that this works really well it's, warm and it's machine washable, and it also is, uh it allows me teo, tie them five inches away have the ties you know five inches away from each other certain types of batting require you to quilt denser together so you'd want to look at that but you can get batting of several different kinds at big box craft stores and I've put some resource is in the materials that you get with the classes well, so I've pretty I've kind of rough cut this and you're not going to want it I don't take this layer down, but you couldn't want to smooth it it's just a lot of smoothing when you're and so you can see why you want to make sure that bottom layer is smooth because you can't see it anymore so I just start from the thinner you wantto just use your hands and just make it really smooth seems to pick up everything this this batting also kind of naturally sticks to the gives you a little bit of help in that regard. Yes have you ever tried to use any kind of drifted material as the batting? So that was something I was goingto talk about let me shave my next line it's like you read my mind so you can up cycle a wool blanket and we actually bought a quilt secondhand that binding was coming off and I could see it's actually a really pretty hundred percent wool blanket used inside and he would just lay it out the exact same way as you could use yeah you would lay out the exact same way as the batting I was going to say you could even use a do they but I have never tried that and there's so much loft in that and so many feathers I'm not sure how that would work could be fun to play with so but yeah well blankets or great what about a flannel sheets could you use that yes so I actually have a quote that I'm going to demonstrate the binding on and it's a dull quilt and it has a flannel sheets in the center you mean in the centre layer yeah I mean you could definitely use something like that to create a lighter quilt maybe a lighter weight quote um yeah that's a really good idea so you can you can experiment with every type of material I just again I would make sure that you wash it like he would wash the quell so that nothing crazy happens you want it to pre shrink because once you put it in the quote form if everything else has shrunk but that has not shrunk then you're going to get kind of a ripley affect the quilt batting that he would buy in a craft store or a sewing store I don't pre wash these um and I haven't really had a problem. They have just enough crinkly nous after you wash the quilt that it's just kind of nice it just defines everything a little bit better so and then here is another quilt that we're going to use for demonstration for this this is a four patch quilt made of men's shirts so you can see again we used just to go back to ease that the buttons for the for the details the shirt plaque its air fun to use and I like it when it's a different it's cut it a different way every time you try to use something like a shirt placket so um just makes it more interesting but what's great about these men shirt so these air all actually immense shirtsleeves someone whose husband I have a lot of dress shirts she cut sleeves off and sent them today and so I got this out of I think it was sixteen shirtsleeves with plenty to spare, so but you're going to laugh flee you're gonna lay this down now sometimes I will hold the batting in place with binder clips, but I often don't if the bottom is down that I will just lay this over the top and just you can feel and make sure that it's but it's still smooth underneath and then you start from the center and you smooth out making sure that you've got adequate overhang on all four sides, which we d'oh and I'm making this process look quick it does take a little bit of time so just be prepared because you wanted this is your chance to get everything smooth and if I were actually making this into a quote sandwich right now I would probably press the south there some full lines in there so just make sure everything's pressed and when you're putting it together um just make sure again I've actually pressed like on the floor wherever I do it and then this is your sandwich from here you need tio I'm sorry yes a quick question you said to leave some overhang there it looks like it's about couple engines like between two and four because you'll turn that away later it's just good in case this ships at all you've got some wiggle room so yeah two to four inches is perfect thank you so you're going to need to hold these together somehow this is also the not fun part of quote making they do make safety pins for quote basting I don't like those I think they leave a really large hole and especially when you're working with men's dress shirts these air woven much finer than regular quilting cotton so if you punch a hole in there that's really big it may not disappear very easily so I don't recommend those some people use spray basting there are some sprays that you can use that work really well I have these then I recommend using them outside because they do smell like it, he says, and so and then other people thread based threat basing is really time consuming I feel like I'm quoting the quote twice when I'm thread basting but if you're going to be doing a lot of hand quilting thread basting is a way to hold it in place and not prick yourself with pens which has brings me teo how I based a quilt um because I don't like those safety pens so what I use two based my layers together are my flathead pens that I like to use I put a little bend in them and then you know those foam sheets that you buy at the craft store that kid's craft with I cut them into little teeny tiny squares and then on my quilt a start in the very center and you you can feel that you're getting through all three layers a stick that through the bend and it helps it just stick come right back up and then I put that on the end to keep it from sticking on me yes did you put the bend in the pin yourself? I did yeah yeah so I think that these particular pins these long pins with the flat heads there many different brands but these seem to be a smaller penned in those safety pence's safety pins have a really large pin hole that they make so, um I just do this like every four five inches in a grid toe hold them together so let's keep them in a little plastic container they look like this there but this way I do do hand quilting so I could carry this around they stay pretty secure and I don't stick me and I'll have to thread based, so I'll pin some of these and I'll show you how it looks sometimes you still get stuck big sensed everybody like a weird method of doing this. So is this faster than the thread basing or me? It is so threat they say you're using a contrast color so you can see it to take it out later and you're taking really big stitches to just hold all the layers in place and I stopped doing threat, basting when I started quilting on my machine and I just haven't gone back so it's certainly it holds it all together, but it is a little bit more time consuming. I think. How do you guys like to base your quote? I tend to do spray based my last quote I tried pin basing with safety pins and like you did not like the large hole that it left um, so I'm open to trying this method as well or just sticking with this rabies? Yeah, yeah usually hand based on I get my mom to help me way both of us that once it takes quite a bit of time. So I think I might try this out sometime. And I do that because I mostly hand quilt. Yeah, and it works well for that. So that's what's good about this that's. Why I came up with this little thing because I can pulled it my lab when I'm hand quilting and it's not stabbing me continuously. So this is what your quotes essentially going to look like that's? Why I'm so used to stabbing myself with pens. And once in a while I'll go out and my daughter who's sixteen she's so worried did you hurt yourself? I'm like, are you kidding me? Did you have, like, twenty times a day? That's no big deal. So you're going to want to do this? You know, every some people say, put your hand down and you're gonna want tio, keep them about that with part as you go across, I tend to always start in the middle of the quilt and work outward in one direction. And so I try to be nice and uniform and have a grid and it's never quite a grid when it's done, but it holds it all together. And you would do this all the way to the end on all four sides and if you were working on a tabletop you would again do this in one section and then he would move the quilt into the next quarter area are actually pinning with regard to the seems so for this quell that's actually really good question for this quilt we have opened we pressed oliver seems open in anticipation of tying it, so in addition to he's of piecing it all together, so if you are going to be quilting like through the center of each of these were all four of these teams meet you could put a pin there, but you don't have teo I would probably just pen around that instead if you were going to machine quote and by machine quilting I mean cult ing with your home sewing machine, he'd be a little bit more strategic about how you do the pens because when when I'm quoting I'm just I'm like pulling him out as you know fast and so if they're in like a bulky seem, it might be hard to get them out, but it doesn't really matter your goal is to keep these layers together playing nicely and still and no creases and you can even at this point you can remove the tape, you would want to look at the back, make sure that you know, you're hitting the back that you, you can feel it when you put it in that you've gotten it in. But you want to just make sure. And then once you do this, I'll pull the tape up. Once you based these layers together, this is completely one unit. It behaves like one unit, and you can just carry on your lap, turn on netflix and just start going.