Blog – Page 3 – Overall Quilter

The Dreaded Binding Series

The next three videos will show you how to sew on a binding using a 2″ strip.

Video 5: How to Join Strips for Borders and Bindings

Joining your strips on a diagonal makes the seam almost invisible. On a binding the bulk of the seam is distributed making the binding sit even throughout the quilt.

Click Here To Read The Transcript

Hello, my name is Aimee Griffin, from overallquilter.com

Welcome to video 5: How to Join Strips for Borders and Bindings.

Today we’ll be using:

The Olfa Mat
Clover Silk Pins
Fons & Porter Marking Pencil
A Small Ruler, and
Your Strips

So we are going to join our strips together for borders, or for doing your bindings. And what I’m gonna do is, start by taking my first strip and laying it on my mat, lining it up with my grid. So this strip is laid horizontally.

My next strip is going to lie on top of it, but vertically. And again, I’m going to follow my grid lines on my mat. This way I know that I’m nice and straight horizontally, as well as vertically. I also overlap top and bottom, or top and side, where my selvages are. And the reason I do that is, it is much easier to see your corners, if you have a little bit of your overlap. Once you have one horizontal and one vertical, draw a diagonal line from the top corner, top left corner, to the bottom right corner. And then add two pins, one on each side of the line just to keep your strips together. Now, if you have multiple strips then take your strip, flip it over, and now this strip becomes your horizontal, and your new strip becomes your vertical. Again, overlap it, leaving your selvages, so that you can clearly see corner to corner. Draw your line, and pins on both sides of the line. Now the trick to having a perfect joint, is to make sure that you draw a straight line from that corner to that corner, but also to stitch right on top of that line, from corner to corner. And we’ll go to the Sewing Machine so we can show you how to do that.

So now, we are going to stitch right on top of the drawn line. I’m gonna start with a little piece, my starter, and I’m going to stitch right on top of that line. I’ve changed my foot to an open-toe foot, to an appliqué foot because it’s easier for me to see my stitching line. And once you’ve done your stitching, you should have a perfect joint. And what I’m looking at is to make sure that my piece is nice and straight. Once I have a nice and straight piece, then I can go ahead and cut my quarter. And I just do it with my scissors. By just an approximate quarter. And we’ll take it to the Ironing Board, and we’ll press that seam open. Once that seam is pressed open, you’ll have a nice joint. And you do that with all your strips.

Mid Carolina Run Shop Hop

The Mid Carolina Shop hop starts on Tuesday, June 22. Participating shops will be open from 10:00am to 7:00pm, Tuesday through Saturday.

Each shop will be demonstrating something different. We’ll be demonstrating Fusible Applique’ and flower making techniques.

Remember you must have your passport stamped at each shop to be illegible for the grand prize: a $1100 gift certificate. That’s a $100 gift certificate from each shop, plus there are several additional grand prizes and each shop has lots of door prizes.

Can’t wait to see you!

Video 4: Squaring Up Your Quilt

As you get ready for binding, it’s important that the quilt is straight. Our fourth video shows how to cut around your quilt making it ready for binding.

A special thank you to Karen Reardon for letting us use her quilt, “Sunshine and Shadows” for the demonstration!

Click Here To Read The Transcript

Hello. My name is Aimee Griffin from overallquilter.com.

Welcome to video number 4, Squaring Up Your Quilt. So you’re done with your quilt top, you’ve gotten it quilted, and you’re ready to put your binding on.

The first thing you want to do is, make sure that have nice, straight edges. Sometimes, when you’re quilting, or with your quilting, your borders tend to get a little bit distorted depending on how much quilting you’ve e put on them. So today’s video, I’m going to show you how to take your Square Ruler, and your Long Ruler, and get a nice, straight-edge cut, so that your binding will sit nice and straight.

But before that, I want to show you some patterns that we’ve been working on before a Fling collection, and here they are. Here’s six of twelve current Floral Fling patterns available on overallquilter.com. Just click on the online shop link. My favorite is the Monarch. These are all raw edge appliqué patterns, great for lots of thread play opportunities.

Today’s tools are:

The Olfa Mat, Rotary cutting mat.
A 10 ½ inch Square
A 6 ½ by 24 inch Long Ruler, and
A 60 mm Rotary Cutter. I like the 60 mm when I’m squaring up because I’m going through multiple layers. Remember, you are going through your top, your batting, as well as your backing. So, having the 60 mm gives me a better grip on my, on my cutting.

So we’re ready to cut our quilt down or trim our quilt down, so that we can add our binding. But we’ve got to make sure first that we are even, all the way through. That our border is even all the way through. If you’ve started with the 6 ½ inch border, once you’ve taken that seam in, you’re now down to 6 and a ¼. The more quilting you have, the more chances of your border being distorted. So, I’m gonna take my Square Ruler and I’m going to position it so that I can square down to 6 inches all the way around, making sure that my borders all are consistent. Take your 12 ½ or your 10 ½ inch Ruler, Square Ruler, and line up the 6 inch line with the outside border and inner border seam. I’m gonna make sure that, that is nicely lined up. And if you need to wiggle your quilt a little bit, it’s okay. You wanna make sure that you’re nice and straight. My 6-inch line is nice and straight on that seam, and my 6-inch line is nice and straight on this seam. Now I can take my Rotary Cutter, and cut all the way out. And I always start on the corners because I want to use my Square on the corners. So I’m gonna do one corner, and then I’m going to continue using my 6 ½ inch Ruler, and I’m just going to turn my quilt, and this is a fairly large quilt, so I want to put it on my table. And the other thing you don’t want to do, is have your quilt dragging on the floor because it does pull on you. You want to make sure that you have the entire quilt on the table, which is sometimes kind of hard if you don’t have a big enough space. That’s why I like the large mats. So, I’m gonna take my 6 ½ inch Ruler, I’m gonna find my 6-inch measurement and once again, line that 6-inch line with the seam that’s between my outside border, and my inside border. That last seam that you have there. Now I’m nice and straight, all the way through. Now, if you’ve seen my first video, the cutting video, you’ll know that when I cut a long piece, I cut half way, re-position my hand and the cut the rest of the way. And I’m going to do that again when I’m cutting my borders. Once again, ensure that you have a nice straight line. Start, go half way, Rotary Cutter down, re-position your hand, and cut all the way. And now, we’re going to go ahead and move our quilt down again, and as you see, we are doing it in sections because this is a large quilt. So, I’m going to move my quilt, re-position my quilt, making sure once again that my 6-inch line is sitting right on that seam. And I’m going to cut halfway to my Ruler, re-position my hand, and cut all the way through. Now, as I get closer to the corner, we’ve got one more. One more long Ruler, and then we’ll use our Square Ruler again. And I’ll show you how to do that again, one more time. Take my Long Ruler, find my 6-inch line. Now, not all borders are not 6 ½ inches. So if you’ve got 8 ½ inch border, you’ll need a larger Ruler. You’ll need an 8 ½ inch Ruler. I’m going to go ahead and start, go halfway, re-position my hands, and continue through. Now I’ve gotten to the corner. So I’m going to take my Square Ruler, and once again, I’m going to position that 6-inch on the corner there. Now, my Ruler is not big enough. So before I do that, I’m going to take my Long Ruler one more time, and get that, get that cut just a little bit so that I can use my Square Ruler. Once again, I’m going to find my 6-inch line, here’s my 6-inch line. I’m going to line that up with my corner seam, and I’m going to cut, and then I’m going to cut on top one more time.

And you have a nice 90 degree angle. And you want to do that all the way through, catching or cutting all corners, and all along edges.

And you’ll be ready for your binding.

Symposium Wrap-Up

The Charlotte Quilters’ Guild hosted this year’s Quilt Symposium. Not only were there gorgeous quilts for show, but nationally known teachers were hired to teach. It was held at the Johnson and Wales School in Uptown Charlotte. As it works out each guild gets to host it every 10 years. Next year’s Symposium will be in Raleigh. Leah Day took Best of Show and wow, what a beauty! I’m planning a video interview with very soon!

The quilts were fabulous – from traditional needle turn to paper piecing and fabulous machine quilting. What an art.

Surrounding the quilts were the vendors. We were in tight, tight, tight quarters; the rooms filled with quilters. Did I mention tight quarters?

We debuted our Floral Fling Pattern collection and it was a hit! If you didn’t get a chance to see them, Marc’s going to be posting them on the site for online purchasing. Or stop in at the shop until June 30th.

The Monarch Butterfly was the first to sell out, with the Hydrangea coming in close second. We’ll be busy making more kits this week, and getting ready for the auction.

Speaking of the auction, don’t forget to come out this Saturday, June 12th from 2pm to 5pm to make your bids!

Video 3: Pressing a Seam

Week 3, and it’s a short video. Not a whole lot of time this week as we were busy with the North Carolina Quilt Symposium. This video shows setting your stitches and how to press out getting a flat seam. I normally use a very hot dry iron. The video has been uploaded to Vimeo (posted below) and YouTube.

Click Here To Read The Transcript

More About the “Next Chapter”

Thanks to all of you who have emailed, called and stopped in with words of encouragement and best wishes. I know many of you are sad, but this is really a great thing for us and you. Let me give you a clear view of what we’ll be bringing you in the future:

Retreats – We are known for our entertaining, instructional retreats. I will be adding more retreats throughout the year. Wait till you see some of our new locations!

Shows – We are already committed to be at the Cabarrus Quilt Show in September, Barnful of Quilts in October and the Quilting and Needle Art Extravaganza in Statesville in January. We plan on having kits, kits and more kits along with our beautiful, easy to read patterns. We’ll be looking into attending other shows as well.

Videos – We’ll continue to bring you instructional videos on basic quilting techniques.

Workshops – I’ll be scheduling workshops at various locations throughout the year.

Patterns – I’ll be working hard to bring you new patterns, ideas and more inspiration.

The Blog & Other Stuff – Oh yes, the blog. I’ll have time for that too … I’ll be a blogging fool! I will keep you updated on my happenings. I’ll also have the time to finish my Quilting 101 book, and start on “The Easy Way to Paper Piecing!”