How to Quilt

Transcript After your quilt top is done, you’re going to decide how you want to quilt your quilt. Your options are hand quilting, machine quilting or tying. Machine quilting is probably the easiest. It’s certainly the fastest. You can do straight lines in a grid or on the diagonal diamond grid. What it should depend …

Transcript Hi, my name is Cathy Izzo. I am the owner of The City Quilter, a shop in Manhattan for quilters. We sell fabrics, notions, rulers, everything you need to make a quilt. We have lots of books, patterns and lots of inspiration. I didn’t really have any retail experience when I started, but I …

Transcript Your choice of batting really is going to depend on a couple of things. First is what is the quilt going to be used for. Are you making the quilt for warmth? In which case you might want a heavier batting like a wool. Is it going to be a nice fluffy baby quilt? …

Transcript The first thing you have to think about when you want to prepare your fabric for a quilt is do I wash it or do I not wash it? And there are lots of arguments for either side. Some people swear they wash everything and some people don’t wash it at all. So you …

Transcript Well, to design a quilt, I think the first thing you have to think about is, what is the end use? Is it going to be a baby quilt? Is it going to get washed every other day? Is it something you’re going to give to a new daughter-in-law? What’s the use? Who’s getting …

Transcript There are a lot of unfamiliar terms in quilting, but once you get the hang of it, it all becomes rather clear. Here we have a completed sampler quilt. You know it’s completed because it has a back, and it’s got a binding on the edge. There’s no raw edges anywhere. It’s a sampler …

Transcript Now that you’ve made your continuous binding, you can take the seam over to your ironing board and press it open. That way, there’s a little less bow in the binding. Then press it in half lengthwise. You’re going to have this nice long piece and you’re going to match the raw edges of …

Transcript You’ve decided that you want to machine quilt your quilt, but you want to do something a little more exciting than straight lines. Free motion quilting is your answer. For free motion quilting, you will need a machine where you can put down or cover your feed dogs, which are these little tractor like …

Transcript When I make continuous binding, I usually cut my strips two and a half inches wide by the width of the fabric. It’s a nice size. You don’t have to play with it a lot. So you take your first strip, lay it on your mat. Second strip, 90 degree angle, put it across. …

Transcript At its most basic a quilt is two pieces of fabric on either side of a piece of batting held together by the quilting stitches. In actuality it is much more. Quilting has a long history. It was used in feudal Japan as armor, heavily quilted clothing used as armor to protect people against …

Transcript Now we’re at my favorite part of quilting. I love sewing the binding to the back of the quilt because it means I’m just about finished. And it’s very relaxing. So, here’s your lovely quilt top, the binding, and what you want to do is press your binding, makes it a little easier to …

Transcript After you have your binding sewn on your entire quilt, you can see here it’s all done, you stop about four or five inches away from where you started, and you cut your binding. You make them meet in the middle, and you measure. And the width of your binding, two and a half …

Transcript One of the best things you can learn is how to make a good knot. Needle in your dominant hand, end of the thread in your other. You’re going to place the thread on top of the needle and hold it with your dominant hand. You’re going to wrap the thread three times, slide …

Transcript After you’ve been quilting a while, you usually end up with some odd shaped scraps of batting, that aren’t really big enough to do anything with. What you can do, if you want to use things up, is you can piece the batting. The important thing to remember, when you’re piece batting, is you …

Transcript If you’re a sewer one thing is for certain, you will end up making a mistake at some point in your career. And for that, to remedy that, you need this essential item in your toolkit. It’s a seam ripper. Very simple but very important. So, we’ve sewn these two fabrics together and they’re …

Transcript Once you’ve got your quilt top layered with your batting and your backing fabric, and it’s taped down so it’s not going to move, you’re ready to start thread basting. Thread basting would be the best if you were planning on hand quilting your quilt. For thread basting, I use a very long needle, …

Transcript Once you’ve decided to machine quilt your quilt, you will pin baste it, to keep all the layers in place, so they don’t shift while you’re sewing. What’s really helpful, for this kind of quilting, is this little attachment. It’s called a walking foot, or an even feed foot. And what it does is, …

Transcript You’ve quilted your quilt, now what? Now comes the point where you want to trim the edges. You want to have a nice straight edge to put the binding on. Here’s where a 12 inch square ruler comes in really handy. You’re going to line it up to the corner, slice the edge, top …

Transcript Here is a lovely but very simple quilt top made out of Japanese fabric. And there are really a lot of ways you can quilt this top, and the first way I would think I might approach it would be a technique called ‘stitching in the ditch’. So, that’s where you’re going to sew …

Transcript You’ve got your quilt top all sewn together. The next thing you want to do is add your borders. To get the most accurate measurement, you’re going to measure the middle of your quilt. Actually, you’re going to be going this way for these borders. And we’ve already put on our top border, and …

Transcript After you’ve made your quilt top, and for today we’re going to pretend this is our quilt top that’s completed. You’re going to want to layer it for basting. The first thing you’re going to need is a piece of backing that is larger than your top, that’s the most important. You want to …

Transcript I think choosing fabric for a quilt is really the best part. It’s really fun; you can play with pattern and design. Definitely it’s some people’s favorite part. The easiest way I think to choose fabric if you’re a beginner is to find a print that you really love and make sure it’s multi-colored. …

Transcript Now that we’ve got our completed quilt top and our batting and our backing taped and layered, we’re ready to start basting. How you baste it is going to depend on how you quilt it. If you are going to machine quilt it, you’re going to want to use safety pins and I can …

Transcript Baby quilts are often the first kinds of quilts people make. Usually you have a friend that’s about to have a baby and you think what a wonderful gift. And it’s true, people love getting baby quilts as gifts. And they’re really pretty simple to make. They’re not as big as a full bed …

Transcript After you’ve gotten your pieces cut the next step is to put them together. When you piece a quilt top the first thing you have to know is that the pieces that go together all have to be the same size, and they usually start with the smallest pieces you’ve cut. You can see …

Transcript People ask me all the time, “What do I need to start quilting?” And what I say to them is, “Well, in the old days people just needed fabric, thread, scissors, and a few pins.” However, today people want to make a quilt in a lot less time. So there are wonderful inventions like …

Transcript A few words about ironing. Ironing is a really important part of the quilting process. Before you start cutting anything, you should iron your fabric. It will really make your life much easier down the road. And then, after you piece a seam, like this, when we have one pieced here, you really do …

Transcript Today I’m going to show you something about templates. We don’t use templates as much as we used to because of the wonderful invention of rotary cutters, but there are times when you’re going to need a template because you have an odd shape, like this tumbler shape right here. So, very simply, the …

Transcript We’re going to cut a two-inch strip of fabric. The easiest way I know of doing that is with a rotary cutter and ruler on a mat. We’re going to take our fabric. Take the salvage, which is this end with the holes. Match it to the other salvage. Straighten it out. The first …

Transcript Today we’re going to talk about rulers and mats, you can see as I have set up here mats come in a variety of sizes. Little tiny ones, larger ones and really big ones, and I would say for a first timer buy the largest mat you can afford or have a place to …

Transcript Before you can start cutting your patches for your block, you’re gonna need to line up your fabric. You can see, when you get your fabric from the quilt store, it’s gonna be cut off the bolt. You can see, it’s pretty much how it all comes. And sometimes, when you get it home, …

Transcript Now we’re going to talk about rotary cutters. They’re a wonderful invention. They really speed up the quilting process and make everything much more precise. It’s a great tool. This is my favorite rotary cutter. It has an ergonomic handle. The blade isn’t exposed unless you squeeze the handle. It also has a lock …

Transcript I know a lot of people are confused by the terms grain and bias but it’s really very simple. It just refers to the way the threads are woven in the fabric. So when we talk about straight of grain, we’re talking about threads that run parallel to the selvage here. And when you …