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Lesson Info

Hand-sewing the Opening Closed

So the technique I like to use when I'm flattening out these edges is kind of a rolling technique, so I just sort of bring the top layer back in my fingers like this, and then I rolled, I don't know what we're looking at if it's the overhead camera, I'll try to get to the corner of it here, so I bring the top layer back a little bit in my fingers to try to expose the layer underneath, and then I just roll the top player forward, and that way I can get very precisely on the edge, and then I have a precise place to press again. You're not using steam at this point. I am not this again, I'm pressing through if usable, interfacing here, that's on the other side of the quote, top is your particular heat said you're using here I use a medium high heat so about usually about three quarters of the way to the maximum heat setting on your iron is plenty, and then, of course, here, all we have left is thie original, open edge. We've already pressed the sides of it under a little bit, so we'll jus...

t make sure that those air straight with the rest of the quilt, if you need to make any little adjustments, you can completely do that right? And then that is edge bound and ready for us to quit with when it was that simple and easy. I really like this technique if I'm going to make like like I said before, a baby quilter quote for a young child and I, you know, it's, the kind of thing they're probably going toe grow pretty quickly. I mean, there's a difference between the beautiful handmade christening quote that you spend a thousand hours making and the everyday quilt that you make that a baby's gonna puke on or dragged through the grass, right? So for the everyday style of quell, this is a very functional and quick binding method to use, so I'm gonna give you guys a minute to catch up on that, and then we'll talk about howto clothes, this big opening here in the top you and how much do you quote for other? You know what? I'm really terrible about making anything for myself ever I always craft for other people. Are you like that too? E project like it and give it away it's like cooking, right? Thanksgiving dinners like full now think it's all years, yeah, for me it's all about the process and when the when the project is complete, I really I lose interest in the finished product almost immediately. And I just want to go on to the next project, you know? Are you like that, john? Now you make for you that's going to healthy about nina and kelly. Balanced individuals. That's. Good. So I really like this rolling thing. That there's room that was it's really working? Well, it's, a great technique for anything that you make that you need to turn right side out. Impress flat holders and pillows and all kinds of things. Quotes done. Everybody's gonna get orange and black potholders. Are you saying that you're going to take your giants t shirt collection and turn it into potholders or the leftovers? Oh, look, after I made this from all those extra pieces, do you have any pocket graphics? You could make some pillows to you, but those would be for me, too. Yes. Well, I respected I d'oh. It could be a pillow instead because you could put pills for a minute and how it has that turning out. How are you liking the same bythe perceval flat? That'll be nice since you you could do any of the cruelty methods we've already talked about on this. Yes. All three quilting methods were beautifully with this. The one thing to keep in mind is with machine quilting. We have to be careful at the edges. When we were machine quilting, we actually were able to so right off the edges of the peace, and if you do that here you end up with hanging threads, and it also kind of distorts the edge because it pushes it out a little bit. So the pet quilt, if that is still anywhere nearby, is one that I made using this finishing method, and I'm machine line quilted it, and here I'll describe it. Thank you. And what I did was I just stitched inside the boundaries of each of the little squares that I made that out of. So on the back, what you have is a pattern of squares, and I also stitched a wide border around the edge to lock that down, and that was plenty of quoting I'm within six inches everywhere you look, but I didn't go off any of the edges that worked great. I'll tell you guys that I was taking the photo shoot with this for the bonus pdf that I that I'm giving with any time access to this class, and I needed my cat toe lay on it, but it's not like he does anything when it's not his idea, so I was, you know, very courteously asking him, you know, I need youto I need you to help me down on this I got to take the photo the lights right like it needs to happen right now could you could you do that for me and he's like whatever and so I just set it up in the nice let's spot and then sprinkled catnip all over the surface of it and of course then he's like all about and he's doing all these awesome poses and everything and then just photoshopped out the cabinet when I put it in the pds four works like a charm the stitches are for that's true so the method you were showing us with the machine quilting earlier using the little star motif these is that or even there are feather stitches that are quoting stitches in all kinds of friends of sewing machines and they look like little feathers and you can use those on the edges lots of lots of cool ways to use those decorative stitches with fun threads and pretty thread. So yeah that's true a lot of those decorative stitches air repeating stitches they're designed to make a border and I could totally see that used in this kind of a context just stitch right through all the layers so the quilt be amusing that's tight right exactly it's also kind of forgiving definitely no you were noticing a difference in the decorative stitches between how they worked when you were shooting a stitching some samples on woven fabric and then you did it on the layers of t shirt you sang in a little bit yeah, which is kind of interesting the t shirt it's s o I probably if I were going to do on the t shirt I might put like the clear stabilizer the wash away stabilizer and didn't do that and then they wouldn't sink in that makes sense because they become, you know, like a thread when you're selling a theme it seems to kind of all in there that's true because they're so tight, right? Right and there's probably attention adjustment you can make you know how about we're talking about a problem probably there is, but I like I like the idea of embroidery stabilizer topping it's called a topping and it's clear it looks like cellophane but it isn't and you just laid on top of your fabric you do your decorative stitches and it prevents your decorative stitches from sinking into the fabric and then you just kind of terror what? Tear it away and then when you wash the quote it just goes away and your stitches still look pretty lots of cool things out there that we need to have in our staff yeah, you added to my wish list but not a mile the best two days for sure the actual people and chat rooms are asking if whether your on line in on twitter or on instagram or on and social no, I wish I could say yes um, I worked for burning of america, so my stuff is on their web site www dot bernie in dot com and there there are classes I've taught and projects I've made, so those air on their website talks end? Uh, yeah, get out the nina dot com, and then you can go and have a look at debbie's calories there. But thank you for asking about that, I think I think you know why? All right, so if we're ready, we'll go ahead and close this opening, you're going to need another threaded hand sewing needle for that, or is it a dreaded hand sewing needle? I don't know which, and once again we're looking for eighteen inches of threat on there and a single layer, so no double thread and you want to tie a good not in the end of the thread for those of you just as a side bar while you guys were getting needles threaded. If you would like to see a good method of nodding thread, I would love to show that to you. This is a variation on something called a quilter's not, and we just make it be fear for sewing the quote, sir, is not is traditionally used in hand, quilting and it's, a very small slim not so that you can actually pull it into the fibers of a quote so it's hidden. But for this style of selling, we need a big not to keep the threat from pulling through the fabric. So if you have threaded your needle and you're holding the needle in one hand and the threat and the other, and you want the two things to face one another, so the end of the thread and the end of the needle or pointing together that's, your first step, second step is to lay the threat against the needle. So again, they're facing two different directions, but now they're against one another, and you hold them both down with one hand, and then in the other hand, you just wrap the threat around the needle bunch of times five or six times and then simply pull the needle up through all those wraps. And when it gets to the end, it'll be a nice, secure, not works really, really well, so we're going to use something called a ladder stitch, too, so this opening and it's very similar to the stitch that we were just putting binding on with a minute ago, we're basically just going to take alternating stitches through these folds at the edge of the work, and so the first thing we need to do is hide the not so just like we did with the binding sewing, we're just going to take a little stitch on the inside through the seam allowance to get us started just right here at the end of the opening and that'll just bury the not to the inside, and then we'll come out here and we'll take our first stitch into the folded edge of the backing or the top, whichever is farthest away from you at this point and again, we're looking for about an eighth eighth of an inch ish wide stitch, and then we'll take a stitch through the other side again about an eighth of an inch, and you want the beginning of this new stitch to be right below where your threat emerged from the stitch before it, and then we just continue alternating a great thing about this ladder stitches it's very invisible. So even though I'm using very high contrast black thread here when I pull these stitches tight, they're not going to show at all, so we keep alternating are stitches back and forth and this little ladder starts to form between them like so and then when we pull that type, the stitches just vanish and the two sides of the fabric or write together it's a it's a great pan stitch and if you want to if it makes it easier for you, you can take your clothes a wonder close and you can actually pinch these sides together I tend to just fold things as I so but this is also a great method like so how much hand sewing do you all d'oh on a regular basis says they know very little very little so I'm just because it's easier than getting out the machine okay your machines depending on if I can get out and whip it out really quick in less time than it takes me to get out the machine said it a clear office space I'll do the twenty fourth not everybody's got that kind of space I only recently was able to set up that kind of space my partner and I took the plunge because we both work from home and we actually swapped our living room and our back bedroom what we used to use as an office. So now when you walk in my apartment it's like kraft ipod world headquarters you walk right into our office space but it works great cause it's a bigger room and now I can have a whole sewing stations set up and that's been tremendous, because when I go to start a sewing project, I don't have to think of it in terms of the logistics of getting set up. First, I can just walk up to the machine and do it. I actually love the act of hand sewing it's just so rhythmic and it's soothing and to me, sometimes you can get a much nicer finish on things because you have precise control of its stitch by stitch, as opposed to maneuvering a machine and trying to make sure the machine does it. Precisely. So I've done about half of this with ladder stitch, but as you can see, get a really clean finish with it, and then I do want to show you a quick not although I haven't sown all the way across this opening, I'm guessing you probably don't want to watch me so across this entire opening, so I will show you the end. Now I'll show you how to tie the knot to lock it off, and then we'll be done, but so I will stop. I will make one last stitch through this last edge, but I'm going to leave in that stitch. Just a tiny loop like so. And then I'm going to put my needle through that loop two times, which is really important if any of you were embroiders, you might be used to passing your needle just once under the threat of the back of the work and having that function is not which it does for embroidery, but when your hand sewing and you need that you need that not to be secure that's why you pass your needle through the loop twice because that will make us secure not that won't come out and then you just pull that nice and tight and then what I do is I just stick the needle through the two layers one last time and I kind of bring it out anywhere in the quilt and that way I can pull the knot snugly down into the layers like that so it's invisible and then cut the threat and it's a perfect finish and now you've got basically a functioning quilt which you khun hand tie or machine tack or you can do some fancy machine quilting on and there you go. Now you have another pet quote, I'll just stack these in my cat and I remember like a big king yeah hold mine up and say, don't play on it and then they'll use it that's true, yeah, it needs to be their idea yeah that's all there is to that so are there any questions on that method? I mean it is very straightforward is part of why I saved it toe last thread that needle I know I wrote a book on hand sign and I just did that like eight a thousand times now I e even the little better nudie mickey is not the way you can use a neil that's comfortable for your hand with a larger I were using the clover gold I quilting needles which are very nice sharp needle but definitely if that's small size and you're not comfortable with threading get a sharp which is a really that's the most common kind of needle and those come in a whole range of wit lengths so you can really pick something that's comfortable for your hand and yeah it's it really is kind of a practice touch thing the more needles to thread the easier it becomes the thing that I like to do is sagan and then you turn there is right no I hear that the's has definitely declined with each successive year but if you're thread end is very well trimmed with something sharp that helps and just a cz general the closer you can get the end of the thread pinched between your two fingers the easier it is to maneuver through a tiny I so you're actually kind of almost doing it invisibly I had it and I pulled it back out so a lot of people try to hold onto the thread away from the needle and then try to aim the needle into and that's just never going to work because the threat is going to move. So you stabilize the thread between your fingers, and then you can pull it right through. My mom taught me that. All right. Are there any questions or comments coming in from the internet? Jake here we have questions right now. It suggests to me that particular this segment everybody's been following along very well, but we do have any questions because way off slowly running out of time here. Now we don't have much time left in the live. We still love to hear from you any questions at all about anything that diane's been sharing with us, not just in this segment. Now is the time to ask them for sure. Thank you for all your comments as well. People are now talking about other crafting projects that relax them and they find soothing. So knitting suddenly come up crashing and tatting. What is taxing? Having is a it's kind of a knot tying crowds. I've never second by macromedia mccraw me a little bit it's like micro macro may in ah more of ah multidirectional style macro may proceeds from a row vertical row of strings and tatting is kind of built in more circular patterns used to be used to make place a lot and we're starting to see I clovers come out with tatting shuttles and things that we're starting to see some interesting modern tatting showing up out there now and together with coaching are you also a dressmaker? Uunet I mean you also I know you want to book out working in plastic and office you've got your fabric flowers that you're working on for two thousand fifteen what other projects so you really do like you you know my this is so most people laugh at me when I say this but my favorite thing in the world is plastic canvas and it's it's a really like nineteen seventies maybe even nineteen sixties thing but it's needle point canvas that's made out of sheets of plastic and the reason it's great is you can stitch designs on it and then you khun so pieces together to make three d shape so you khun build boxes and I've built little robots by you know, making lots and lots of little pieces and stitching including them together I just did a whole set of minecraft figures so in some of you have kids play minecraft I'm guessing and so I took the patterns off the video game for the little brick blocks on the little grass blocks and I stitched those onto panels and then I made the cubes that they build with and I made the little stevie guy with movable arms and stuff so it's like a building material that you cover with needle point embroidery and that that dimensionality really appeals to me and it's one of those crafts that if you don't mind my saying so walks a really fine line between awesomeness and ugliness and so if you look at a lot of like nineteen seventies plastic canvas there's a lot about it that's just endearingly hello hilarious because that was such a wildly inventive era in crafting and I just could never get enough of looking at that vintage stuff because it's just so funny and wonderful to may so that's my doctoral dissertation on plastic canvas all right, so we actually can put a little time and quoting on this or not, but I kind of feel like we've covered quoting and a fair amount of detail as long as you know not too so off the edges of a binding like this that's all you need to know everything else about quoting this is exactly the same as we've already covered, so I'll go ahead and move on to the subject of quote, care and answer any questions you have there and that'll wrap this up and since we have the style of quilt out, as I mentioned before it's good to know that this style of quilt and especially with this kind of hand tying that's more minimal is quilting is the kind of quote that you want to handle with more care than the type of bound and more tightly quote, quote that we were making earlier in general laundering is really not the best thing that can happen to a quilt quilt is going too slowly deteriorate over time if it's laundered a great deal or if it sees a lot of direct sunlight because of course, quilting cotton fabric is not meant to last for millennia, it'll slowly break down over time so it's a good rule of thumb that the less often you can get away with washing your quilt the better for quilts that air seeing normal usage like they're on a bed or their draped over a couch and maybe you cuddle on the couch once in a while with, um where you sleep under them. Generally speaking, you can get away with about a once a year washing now if you're going to take it out and do a picnic with it or not, your kid dragged through the mud or something more than of course you have to wash it more often and all that will happen is it just shortens the life of the quilt a bit, but I mean why would rather I would rather love a quilt and wear it out myself than to try to keep it in a in a hyperbaric chamber effort for millennia anyway, so for machine washing, your best bet is to go with cold water and the mildest detergent you confined and some washing machines haven't agitator, which actually puts a lot of stress on the quilt because while the quilt is wet and heavy inside that machine, it's also kind of shaking at a lot so if you have the ability to disable your agitator in your machine that's a better bet for washing a quilt and a lot of older washing machines I believe don't have an agitator it all so you don't have to worry about it for drying that's where we get into the t shirt quilts especially because of course we've been using this for usable interfacing on the inside underneath the blocks and you don't want to put excessive heat on that stuff because again it's made of plastic and so that will tend to do some funny warping and stretching and that could actually show up his lumps and bumps on the surface of your quilt. So if you're going to put it in a dryer, I would use a low heat setting or a no heat setting or if you can manage it, I would highly recommend hanging it on a line to dry that's really the best way to dry a quilt or if you don't have a clothes line if you have a couple of patio chairs you can always set them apart from each other and then drape the quilt over the two of them and let it dry that way. Or you can do a compromise position, which is really I'm letting it partially dry in the dryer on a low heat setting and then putting it out to dry or vice versa, whichever you like best. If you do put your quilt outside, I highly recommend keeping it away from direct sunlight because direct sunlight really will deteriorate cotton fabric rapidly, so put it out under some shade trees or put it out to dry during the hours of the day when the sun's dipped below the horizon a little bit and you'll be just fine for storage. I'm hoping you won't store these t shirt quotes. I'm hoping you'll keep him out and actively youth. Um, but for storage, you want to avoid moths, so you might want to use some cedar chips or or mothballs if you like them. But does anybody like mothballs anymore? I'm seeing faces he's like, yeah, yeah, some cedar is just fine to keep moths today, it's also nice to get some of those separate plastic pouches, like when you buy betting at the store, the you could to save that pouch and then store your quilt in that if you want tio used to treat oil came off so why do you put it on a cotton patter something yeah and then I wash like when I washed sweaters I used that because I did a lot so that seems to help block it smells good that's awesome your font of christie information as well I've done it I can answer questions from the internet on quote care it's really about gentleness in frequency and no no direct sun and some dry cleaning is out you could dry clean it's expensive but if you just do it once a year yeah I'm a believer in the I don't know to me I it's again you know I want to use this I want to enjoy it I'm just going to want to launder it in my home there's no reason you can't dry clean it I just feel like that's a big expense but it's fine we just have a question not necessary about care but I'm not sure I understand the question so forgive me if I've got this wrong but diane do you ever use the quilt as you go method does that make sense to a quilt so it does it does yes I haven't done it with t shirt quoting myself but you absolutely could quote as you go just means that you would sandwich each block individually and then quilted and then you would so the sandwiched quilted blocks together and because their thick of course then you have a little special binding that you put over the same lines between the two each of the two pieces to cover those seams there's a lot of quilt is you go methods on the internet that are kind of fun to look into a common acronym for it is q a y g had just think about that for a second, but that that could be nice again with the t shirt quilting, since we don't do a lot of complicated quilting as a rule because there's so much variable in how much these graphics that are printed on here going to stick to a presser foot, I would really depend on the pile of shirts, some shirts, khun b quilted over thickly and some shirts cannot, so it would just depend if you happen to be working with a group of shirts that would accommodate a lot of quilting, that might be a fun way to construct thank you that russian here from angie and just saying earlier, diana was saying that the edges will be bad if because of the way the fabric shifts when killed when quilting if you attack the edges. So why is that not a problem when quilting after sewing all around because you're not going to, you've already established the edge and you're not going to so off the edge this is by far a much more casual looking. Style of quilting than what we've been doing with the binding. And you can absolutely see it in my sample that it's got a few more wrinkles of lumps and bumps to it. And the same is true for my large size sample. And so it's it's. Not as careful and precise a method of finishing as we did with the bound quilt, because the keeping the layers unbound and binding them at the last minute really allows us to get them as flat and smooth as possible. Where is with this one, where we're a little more puffy and rumpel e call it shabby chic, or whatever they call it.