Lessons

Lesson Info

Sewing Your Columns Together

So less assume that I've got two strips of my giant sized coils here, and I need to sew those together and here's where our question of the grain of the interfacing becomes pertinent. Ok, so I have a couple of samples for you representing interfacing grain, so I just cut some blocks and I drew an arrow on them to represent the direction that the grain is running right now. Okay, so you have all experienced a this point that when you take two blocks and you put them together so that the grain is running the same direction across the block and you so in the same direction is the grain the blocks air coming out is the same size the fabric is doing no stretching my blood without even looking at your seems I'm sure you're getting nice, precise seems yes. Ok, let me show you what happens when you have two so across the grain, so I'm going to take these to sample blocks, and I'm going to sew them together along this edge, and I'm going to sew my seem perpendicular to the screen and let's see ...

what happens? Wouldn't it be perfectly hilarious if nothing happened at all? Like this would be the one time in history when it comes out just fine and it's not a problem. Well, now you said that, you know, it's gonna happen. It's what happened in my nightmare last night, too, so all right, so let me so this quickly, fast. All right, this may need a close up view, but what happens is the fabric does a little bit of stretching on these bernie the machines with their level of precision, the stretches? Not honestly, that bad, but I have an old machine that I use at home sometimes, and I can gain up to a quarter inch on the length of the block I'm selling across, and that will really become a problem in the context of long seems like we're going to be doing, too. So these quote columns together, if you have a quilt made up of five or six columns, and you're having this stretching happens, you can see that this game just a little bit of extra length. If you're having that stretching happened than with each one of these seams, your quilt is going to get a little bit longer each time, and so you'll end up with the quilt, that's, one length at one end and a totally different longer length at the other end, and it'll have kind of a roughly fan shape, because it's grown so different machines they're going to handle this differently. I would highly recommend that you test this on your home machine just fuse a couple of blocks, dry yourself some big arrows and then so across the grain and see what you're dealing with I'm going to show you a fix so that if selling across the grain gives you a big mismatch in your pieces, you'll be able to cope with that just fine for these long scenes. All right? So since since we've been talking about this a lot just to reiterate with a quick illustration here so as we've been talking about the grain on all of our blocks has been running horizontally that's the way we've cut the interfacing and that's the way we've seen them together, but of course that means that we have to sew a scene where there's no option but to so across the grain when we do these together. So the fix that I will have for that is we'll just take our fuse herbal interfacing and will cut a nice narrow half inch strip that is along the grain and will fuse that toe one of these pieces and then weaken so on that side poof stretching problem is gone so here's what that looks like I know right? Tricky because it's happening try neil net it'll be on the inside and you'll never see it yeah and it won't affect the seymour anything now, one thing we do need to do is, of course, because the grain of this interfacing runs along the length of the long strip. I can't really cut across here because that would be across grain strip and that's still my problem. So what I find easiest to d'oh is actually just cut myself a nice, wide peace, and for the purposes of this cutting that in this ruler in eighteen inch length is good, although if you're blessed with a bigger cutting that and bigger rulers, you could certainly cut a much wider peace, and then we'll just cut a lot of narrow strips from it, and we'll just piece them together like we were talking about earlier. So let me make this eighteen inch cut here, and I want to set that aside. And now again, just to just to keep our visual alive here, the grain of the center facing is running that way, so I'm gonna cut along the grand isle just line the subject with an edge of the cutting, matt, and then I can use the quarter inch increments of my ruler to get nice half inch strips and, depending on the length of the columns of your quilt, you may need quite a few of these, but what you can always do is just cut three or four five six at a time and then if you need more you can always cut more and add them so I'll just cut four right now that should be more than enough for me and of course you contest by giving him a little poll they're not stretching, they're not breaking so we know we're on grain so you don't have to put you don't have to put these strips on both pieces of fabric on leon the one you're going to so right because that's all you need is the ones that the side that you're putting the needle through on the top just needs to be on grain so I will take as always the rough side of the interfacing down and I'll just put this right along the edge and what I can dio is again just tack it down so now I don't have to worry about keeping that strip in place while I scoop my quote piece up and had the rest of this overlap these two pieces by about a quarter inch don't measure it no need to measure that and then just check it well, grab a pair of scissors and trim off the excess there and then we can just fuse this like normally the aha moments that they don't show you in any sewing book our way no attacking, no little strip no yeah I'm thrilled to hear that I feel like sewing is full of these little mystery tippy tips. Well, this this just came out of I was working on the kid's quilt, and it was just it has a lot of columns to it, and it just kept growing and growing it's literally three inches longer on one side than the other, and I kept re checking on my measurements and in all my blocks were straight, but it just kept growing, and so finally I ripped out all of the seams and took everything down and then realised that's where I was gaining the length, and then once I tried this little trick, it just poof and was like it all fit perfectly together again and ripping on a t shirt material is not nice. No, in fact, right after we do this, I'll show you my method for removing scenes because it makes a big difference, okay, so I'll just put these together, right sides facing, I'm trying to keep all of the pieces that I'm demo ing here of an appropriate tabletop size, so obviously if this were and if this were an actual quick the's would be very long pieces, and we'd be working at a much larger scale it's just something good to keep in mind, although the process is exactly the same it's just a little bit more fabric wrangling and so then we would just pin knees and so if you guys would like to sew the long seems together on your pieces feel free to do so if you want to use it as a test for how much length you might gain by selling cross grain these air just junk pieces feel free to do that or if you want to practice cutting the narrow strips of interfacing and sewing on grain with them, you could do that too. I have another question sure you were exactly exactly you know when you're trying to match your seems but they're not is it more important to match these guys or is it more important to match the outside? We'll tell you, I'll tell you what this those samples might be creating a slightly artificial portrait of how I go about t shirt quilting because I actually deliberately try to make sure there are no points where the seams have to match in my t shirt quilt sat with the little corner squiggly bits that I would write the corner squiggly bits really if you could design it so there aren't for intersecting points anywhere, which is very easy I just kind of happens naturally then you never have to worry about that it's not that you can't it's just that t shirt fabric still has that little bit of give and that does make those precise point match ings a bit harder than with a woven fabric so it's if you avoid it you have a happier life in general so we should be able to see here that and placing this in my machines so that I'm going to be sewing basically right down the center of that on grain strip that I created and that is going to take care of any stretching that might occur on at the end of the same these pieces oil continue to be the same length for those of you who don't do a lot of sewing keep in mind that a seam doesn't have to happen in one single shot many many so it stops sewing in the middle of a scene and pull out a pin or make adjustments to their fabrics fact one week will tomorrow I'm going to have you stopped selling and mid seem constantly so there there are no prizes for being able to sew seem from start to finish it's always find to pause in fact it's better to pause and adjust things so that you get a nicer result. You do question from rg h dinos saying if you bring is so in the long vertical scenes using the walking foot does that avoid destruction problems instead of using the extra strips and interfacing that doesn't necessarily help the walking foot really mitigates and in fact we've just demonstrated with the bernie know that it really mitigates aa lot but on the old machine I use at home a lot of the time, even with the walking foot, I still get that stretch so the walking foot makes just keeps the pieces moving through the machine at the same rate and it helps prevent a lot of stretch. I would highly recommend that you just do a test with your own machine and a few blocks that you've made again just few some interfacing so the back and then draw narrow so it's really clear which way the grain goes and then try a block where you so across the grain and see what happens on your machine and that will even tell you whether you need to use this trick or not, you may not need to use it actually, the question for debbie this's actually, from genial actually saying when she's sewing with the fuse herbal interfacing she finds there's a lot of buildup of stuff on the needle is so that make the needle useless or can you actually clean it? You can you can clean it. There are, um, things you actually I just use alcohol and a cotton ball in that kind of cleans the needle up um and there are a variety of different kinds of things that we use that have that gummy feature and yes, it can it can do that but if you find that your stitches look funky or weird in any way or you hear a clanking noise is there anything that just doesn't feel right to you change the needle because those bend and have birds and stuff so easily and especially when you're using heavier weights like this so when you're selling how often do you change your needles every four to six hours of sowing time is the timeframe that you should change your nato and yes, there was a time in life when I changed it when it broke but that isn't happening way all learn you know over the years but yeah every four to six hours of sowing time unless you're using a titanium needle and then those last three to five times longer so those air more expensive but they do last longer excellent thank you and now question few diana do you put the extra interfacing on the edge to both columns just the one I'm going to sew upon so I sold my seem on this side but I do not have any extra interfacing on the back side yeah all right, so I'll just quickly press the seem open so that we can show that but this is the process by which he'll so your entire quote together short seams to make the long strips and then well so the long seems between strips and that is how the whole thing goes together I always press all of the same allowances open a lot of times in traditional quilt making. A lot of quilters prefer to press the seam allowances to one side for many applications. But because this fabric is very thick with all of the stabilizer, I feel like it's better to press everything open to keep the amount of bulk fairly. Even so, I had actually like tio, are we getting a close up shot of this right now? I hope, as you can see, here is a point where a bunch of seems come together and there's another point here and actually there's four layers of fabric coming together at this point. If I press the seam allowance to one side, then there are more layers on one side of the seam than the other that's going to become an issue when we quilt the quilt. Later on, it's going to create a little a thicker bump in the quilt that khun really arrest the sewing machine is were sewing a seam over it. So that's, why I was pressed with these seem allowances open just for the t shirt application. And so just a ce we did before we're going to press from the back, and then we're going to press from the front of the work to get it nice and flat. Because these fabrics are a little bulk here too you may find that your seem allowances don't stay perfectly flat even once you've pressed them and that's completely ok, it's not going to affect anything in your quilt press themis flat issue can and if they stick up a tiny bit it's not going to hurt anything and then since I don't have any printing on these blocks, I can actually press from the front without oppressing cloth. But obviously that's not something I'm going to do with printed blocks. All right. And so that's a segment of the quilt in progress. How's everybody feeling about that portion of our of our segment here we are you all so in your long seems and it's going okay, yes, but does this when this machine is really good because it doesn't have a lot of stretch like like he was my machine at home would have given me an extra inch and a half at least. But I did have a short block, so I do have a quote that's got a little in there, you know? You could just turn that mitt off. Yeah, yeah that's what I would do in mine as well, I've got a little bit of extra language, so you can always do that, so we're making mondrian on quilts at this point we are in teach terrific you know how ladies over here doing you know how you doing good I'm trying to do this okay I'm working I'll be interested forget that stretching is if you have a machine that has pressed her foot pressure adjustment and these machines do and not every machine does even some of bernini's don't have that feature but it's a really nice way to decrease the amount of pressure being press down on your fabric and then it does reduce the stretch that's for thank you for bringing that up with a walking foot you can reduce the pressure is that a feature that is available on a lot of money burning a model from the mid line and up so five thirty is the lowest model that it would be on but anything above that would have that adjustment see that's great that gives you a lot of fine control and saves you a whole stem really a lot of the older machines you know as machines have continued to grow and develop they have so many more nice bells and whistles my mom taught me to sew on a machine that she had gotten as a high school graduation gift so it's built like a tank everything's made of metal that weighs about eight hundred pounds and you know it's like sounds like a factory sewing but you know it's still running she still uses it to this day but it's, just basically straight seams and zigzagging. That's it. You know it. Zits seems so basic now, because we have all these lovely extras.