Cutting and Sewing Tips--Bust Your Stash post 3

Cutting and Sewing Tips—An Article to Support the Bust Your Stash Challenge

To prewash or not--I prewash

For those of you that are participating in this challenge, I hope that you have a pattern and fabric in mind. The post today contains a few tips designed to make the next steps in your process more efficient and effective.

Fabric Preparation—prewash or not. I prewash because fabrics shrink at different rates. I also don’t want to find out a fabric bled into a background after I’ve finished! If you don’t pre wash, do test the fabric so that you don’t have surprises later. 

Use a sharp blade for rotary cutting

After prewashing the fabrics, I use sizing and sometimes starch with an iron to add back “crispness” to the fabric that the laundry process removed. Click the link to read an article that addresses how to test a fabric for bleeding. Once I’ve ironed out the lumps and bumps, I trim away the selvages for another project. Then I line up the trimmed edges so there are no wrinkles.  

Cutting—

Use a sharp blade. I am lax about changing the blade; but, honestly, a sharp blade allows me to cleanly cut the layers in one pass. 

Line your ruler up on the line rather than just shy of the line. Bonnie Hunter shares a tip about cutting here. You will also be looking at a portion of a block that contains a bunch of two inch squares. . .just saying in case you haven’t picked a design yet!

When cutting move your fingers on the ruler as you cut to maintain the ruler position. The Crafty Quilter shares some tips regarding rotary cutting here. I find that periodically cleaning the lint from around the blade and rotating the blade increases the longevity of the blade. Of course, you get to take the rotary cutter apart for those procedures!

Sewing a thread or two less than a quarter of an inch

Sewing—

Test your seam allowance. Bonnie Hunter has a ruler specifically for testing for seam allowance. You can read about it here.  I personally stitch a thread or two less than a quarter of an inch because the thread takes up a little room in the seam! Do what works for you.

Use leader/enders as these are a great help to start and end your seam on the quarter inch mark. I started a leader/ender project in September. The cool part of the process is that by stitching block parts together instead of a stopping/starting strip, at some point, you have enough blocks stitched for a quilt! 

Check units for accuracy

Check your tension. Use the same weight of thread in the bobbin and in the needle; but, choose a different color for one of the threads. This way, it is easier to determine which of your threads needs adjustment. Superior Threads has an informative article in the education section of their website regarding tension. You can access it here.  

A slightly shorter stitch length seems to work well for me. When I’m piecing, I set my stitch length on my Bernina at 2.5 and at 12 stitches/inch on my Singer Featherweight. Yes, it takes a bit of effort to unstitch; but, I also have less seam popping or unraveling later in the process.

Check your units for accuracy as you stitch. It is easier to unstitch one unit and correct it than it is to unstitch many units!

Pressing—

Press not iron; use a little sizing; let the pressed seam cool before moving; weight it. . .these were some tips I picked up after attending a precision piecing class that Sally Collins taught. You can listen to her tips here.

Press not iron

Chocolate helps! 

Hang in there. Sew a little every week. It always surprises me that I can make progress on a project even if I stitch on it but a few minutes several days in a week! 

Next month our topic will be basting and quilting tips. Don’t forget to post a comment and/or photo at  #2020bustyourstashchallenge on instagram. Comments on this post are welcomed too!