Two Tiny Tips
I’m sharing “Two Tiny Tips” today-things that will make your quilting life just a little bit easier.
Burying thread ends
Sometimes you want or need to bury your thread ends instead of securing the end of your quilting line with tiny little stitches. I do this on my competition pieces or anyplace where the end of my line of stitching is very visible or I want all the stitches the same size.
But sometimes this is a little hard to do. When I’m working with super thin silk thread (100 wt) and I’m taking tiny stitches, it’s difficult to get the bobbin thread to come up top. See what I mean below:
See that tiny little stitch? I’m trying to pop my blue bobbin thread up to the top by pulling on the top thread-that usually works. But in this case the bobbin thread is just not coming up-there’s not enough thread in that tiny stitch to poke through so that I can grab it.
If I work from the top, I’ll go to the last tiny stitch I made, and pull that stitch up. Then if I pull with a needle on one side and hold on to the other side, the bobbin thread just pops up! It’s kind of like a tiny sling to bring that bobbin thread up.
Now I’ve got both threads up on top so I can work the knot.
I thread my needle with both threads through the eye, and wrap the needle once with the threads-this will form the knot.
Now I slide my needle into the quilt sandwich, being careful to not let any threads show on top or below.
Now I simply pull the threads through until the knot snaps into the quilt sandwich and snip off the excess-done! I used this technique many times to bury the threads on a challenge quilt that I’m currently working on. I can’t show the whole piece until the reveal in February.
Loading your quilt into your machine
Imagine you are trying to quilt a queen-sized quilt in your regular domestic machine and you are quilting the middle of the quilt. That’s the hardest place to quilt because you have to slide so much of your quilt under your presser foot just to get to where you want to quilt.
Sometimes, I’m exhausted just getting set up to quilt in the middle of a large-sized piece! And you KNOW that if you have pin basted your quilt-this is gonna happen:
Ack, I snagged a pin when I was sliding my quilt through-it’s just so predictable!
If my presser foot had eyes, this is what it would see. And, if it could talk it would say “yippee, I have an opportunity to snag 10 of those pins before she gets to the center of the quilt!”
This is the normal way you start to slide your quilt under the presser foot to get to the middle-every pin between the presser foot and where you want to quilt could get snagged.
But, what would happen if you merely folded the side of the quilt over to the middle of the quilt? Now only the back of the quilt is showing-no pins to snag, and, you would have half as much quilt to feed through! Wahoo-easy peasy.
Hope this helps and you can tell what I’m talking about from the photos. Every little thing that makes quilting easier is worth it.
If I ever become a machine quilter, your blog will be referenced often I’m sure!
Awww, you can machine quilt!
Jenny:
Thank you for your tips. I love your blog. Recently, I stumbled across another way to bury threads which I learned from Cindy Needham’s blog. When you have finished stitching. lift your needle and pull your work away from the needle a few inches – oh, around 6 inches works. This creates slack in the bobbin thread. Return your work and place it exactly at the location of your last stitch. Needle down once and pull up the bobbin thread and then snip the threads. Easy! I have discovered “easy-thread” needles which don’t require threading thru the eye. You pop the threads thru a slit at the end of the needle. The needles can be purchased at Joann’s. This technique has been a God send to me. It’s fast and looks great. My starts and stops were very messy. I had tried many different techniques but I was never happy with the results until I tried Cindy Needham’s method. I don’t knot the threads together but I can see how that would be a benefit. Thank you for that tip.
On another note, I’ve been waiting to talk to you about attending Houston. The past couple of years I have decided it would a real treat to go to the quilt show in Houston but I don’t have a sense for how much it would cost to attend. I would like to start saving so I can attend a future show. What is a ballpark number for how much money I should set aside for airfare, hotel, food, entrance fees, etc.
Sincerely, Your ASG Friend Valerie Bonkowski
Thanks Valerie! The method you described does give a nice cut off, but I like knots! If I don’t knot, my super slippery silk thread will work its way out-ask me how I know!
If the needles you descirbe are the ones you kind of have to “snap” your thread through-that abrades the thread and also, if you have to pull very hard to snap it through the quilt sandwich, the threads can also pop thru the easy threaders. I do have some “spiral needles” that have a clever way to accomplish the same thing without any of the problems, but, grin, I can never find them in my sewing room! Because they are “special” I put them in a “special” place…..never to be found again, sigh!!
Thanks for BOTH of these tips! I am nowhere near capable of quilting the masterpieces you create for shows and competitions, but I’ve never been a fan of the way the tiny stitches look at the beginning and end of a line of quilting. I assume that if you knot and bury your threads at the end, you must also be doing something similar when you begin a new line of quilting. Can you please show how you handle the thread tails at the beginning in a future post? When I’ve tried to leave the beginning thread tails so I can tie them later, they keep getting in the way of what I’m trying to quilt and trying to hold them out of the way just messes up my quilting. As always, your tips and suggestions are so appreciated. Also — your method of getting your quilt under the needle is so brilliant that I’m smacking my forehead — Duh! Why didn’t I think of that?! :-)
Thanks! There’s no magic to corraling those threads at the beginning-I just kind of hold them out of the way and when they get too bad, I go ahead and bury them-wish there was a better answer!