I thought it might be nice to start a thread where we can get some of our crafting tips together and share them with each other. I am sure many of you have plenty of tips I can use and I hope I can list some here that are useful to you.
Here are some of mine:
1. An old CD is an excellent template to use with a rotary cutter for rounding the corners on fleece throws.
2. Use scraps of polar fleece as batting for patched and ragged quilts (the kind of quilts where you quilt each sqare individually before piecing). I use squares of fleece as small as 2".
3. Scraps of polar fleece and other fabrics that are too small for any sort of construction make great packing material.
4. If you are like me and your pieced quilts look clumbsy, try ragged quilts, they are far more forgiving than traditional quilts.
5. I find the best way to square up fleece when cutting a throw is to fold the area I want to cut out in half on the length and again on the width so that you have folded it into quarters. Gently rub the fleece flat and make sure there are no creases in your fold or in any of the layers. Line up your folded edges against the corner on your cutting mat, measure from the folded edges, and cut while folded. This works best if you have a large rotary cutter rather than one of the smaller ones.
6. I'm only starting to make quilts and I'm not sure how you all bind yours, but I've noticed a trick my mother-in-law uses to bind some of her quilts. She folds her binding so that it is a bit longer on the back. She sews it open to the front and folds it over as usual, but instead of slip-stitching the back down, she chooses a thread that blends very well with the boarder fabric of the top of her quilt and straight stitches along the top so that the stitching is just at the base of the binding on the front and catches the slightly longer edge of binding on the back. You have to look very closely at the front to see the stitching at all. When you are in a hurry to get quilts out, I would think this would be a much faster alternative than the slip stitching.
That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure most of you have more experience than I do, so please join in and share!
Posted on Aug 30, 2004, 8:36 PM from IP address 69.161.10.220
