UK Quilters
You’ve spent ages piecing your quilt top and the excitement mounts as all your blocks form into rows and then one big quilt top. You stand back to admire your work and you can’t wait to move onto layering it up ready for quilting. To get the full effect, you take your completed top to…
Cables are a popular choice of quilting design for borders and come in various widths and styles. Where would you start to plan a cable border for your latest quilt? Stencils are widely available, but they are often not the correct size for your borders- so unless you were incredibly organised, and designed your quilt…
Hearts are an ever popular motif. It’s easy to cut out a template yourself in a variety of styles that you could use for applique or for quilting designs. Watch this short video, or follow the instructions below: Drawing a regular heart shape Take a piece of paper a little larger than the desired motif,…
One of the most often asked questions I’ve seen in sewing and quilting groups has been about sewing machines and which one people should buy. As I’ve been wanting to upgrade my sewing machine for some time I followed these conversations with interest and I’ve come up with my Top Tips that may just help…
A common patchwork unit where getting a good line up can be tricky is the “Square-in-a-Square” unit. Four triangles are sewn around a central square. It should finish as shown in the photo above, with enough of the triangle fabric remaining all round to leave a quarter inch seam allowance beyond the points of the…
We’ve all been there – you see a quilt in a show, on Facebook or Instagram, on the cover of a magazine and think “I’d like to make one like that, but how has it been done?”. At a show, with the quilt in front of you, it can be easier to work out than…
When we are busy making, taking time to practice different techniques can sometimes go to the back of the queue, we are just so intent on getting finished. Recently, I was doing a photo quilt and was so pleased I took the time to do some practice before moving onto the quilting. It saved me…
This list assumes some basic knowledge of fabric, sewing and sewing machines. It is not exhaustive but is intended to be useful for those just starting out on Patchwork and Quilting. PATCHWORKING (verb) The joining together of pieces of fabric by either hand or machine sewing to make larger pieces of fabric. The fabric used…
In the previous video I shared about appliqué I mentioned that I’d share how to remove the centres from shapes and letter. By leaving the shape whole until after attaching to fabric makes things a lot easier as it is not so fragile. Please bear in mind, there is more than one way to do…
How many times have you gone to attach your appliqué pieces to find they are the wrong way? Hopefully, this video will help.
After my previous review of Guterman threads (see here), I was very happy to review this new pack, as I knew how much I like their threads. As with the last thread set, I reviewed there were 10 threads in the pack, but this time it had a rather intriguing metal template! When it arrived,…
Once you move on from simple squares to more interesting patchwork designs, you may run into a few problems when stitching smaller units together into a block. For example, have you ever joined a square to a Flying Geese unit, and wondered why the square is sticking out at the bottom…….? It’s tempting at this…
Jane Galley
Carolyn Gibbs
Chris Franses
Bartysmam
Rebecca Nevard