This post is the first in the 2019 Back to School Blog Hop, and also a tutorial for the Colorblock LOVE QAL!

This is a tutorial for sewing long seams on any quilt.

What’s a long seam? Anything that’s longer than the space you have between the front edge of your machine or table and your needle.

Long seams present an opportunity to introduce stretch into a quilt, and too much stretch is never a good thing. So let’s look a few tips for keeping stretch at bay.

Here’s a quick 10 minute video, and in it I’ve covered all the points below – so you can either read about it, or watch it!

Sewing machine set up

One of the best things you can do to increase your accuracy in general is to expand the bed of your machine. This means get some surface in front of your needle at the same height as the machine bed. You can do this by having the machine in a drop-in sewing table or cabinet, or by adding a supporting table around it. Some machines come with a portable table, and there are some after-market companies like Sew Steady that make them for any machine (in several sizes). Your local sewing machine store will have solutions so pop in and talk to them about it. It’s a solid investment in your accuracy, as I’ll show you a bit further down this post!

Pins

Pinning is ALWAYS a good practice. And by pinning, I don’t mean using clips. Clips are a great solution for really thick things (like the top of a bag or tote with additional layers of batting), but pins are the best solution for precision piecework. Once a pin is in place, it’s very difficult to pull one of the layers out of alignment.

Where should you pin? In all the places that matter: at a minimum, pin each end, and pin the middle. To find the middle, fold the edge where the seam will be in half, and pin or pinch a crease into the middle. Do this on both pieces that make up the seam, and then align and pin the middles once you have pinned the ends.

After that, pin all the places that have to match up, like the points and intersections of blocks.

And then after that, add more pins until you have one every 4 to 6 inches, or about the width of your hand. Yes, this seems like a lot of pins to fuss with, but fussing with pins usually keeps you from fussing with the seam ripper. If you slow down to pin, you seldom need to slow down to rip!

How you hold the fabric

No, this isn’t some secret handshake thingy, it just about having a soft hand with the fabric as it approaches the needle. We often put tension on the fabric as it feeds into the needle – pulling away a bit – but this makes the machine try to grab the fabric while we tug in the opposite direction. And this stretches the fabric.

Instead, line up your work in front of the needle, and hold the layers together in just the space between the edge of your table and the needle, and rather than tugging them away from the needle, hold them down on the table gently as you sew up to your hand. UP TO your hand… not OVER it! And if you didn’t watch the video yet, go do that and this will make more sense!

It’s really frustrating to invest your time and money into making a quilt to have it come out stretched and fitting together poorly. It’s worth taking a few moments to set yourself up for better accuracy because sewing is always more fun when things come together well, and without too much struggle, or seam ripping. Having fun while making things is so important!

Please follow the rest of the 2019 Back To School Blog Hop! Note that these industry peeps are all over the country and world, so be patient if you don’t see their post first thing in *your* morning!

Day 1 – September 1 – Sam Hunter: Sewing Long Seams Without Stretching – huntersdesignstudio.com <<—- you are here!

Day 2 – September 2 – Susan Arnold – Joining Binding the Easy Way – quiltfabrication.com

Day 3 – September 3 – Angie Wilson – Fussy cutting tips and techniques – www.gnomeangel.com

Day 4 – September 4 – Andi Stanfield – No-Mark HST: Let your machine be your guide – truebluequilts.com/blog/

Day 5 – September 5 – Bobbie Gentili – Say YES to Y-seams – geekybobbin.com

Day 6 – September 6 – Mel Beach – 5 Reasons to Say Woo Hoo! to School Glue – pieceloveandhappiness.blogspot.com

Day 7 – September 7 – Laura Piland – 7 Ways to Use a Laser on Your Sewing Machine – www.sliceofpiquilts.com

Day 8 – September 8 – Suzy Webster – How to solve loops in free motion quilting – www.websterquilt.com

Day 9 – September 9 – Tara Miller – Accurate Stitch-and-Flip Corners – quiltdistrict.com

Day 10 – September 10 – Latifah Saafir – Accurate Seams Using Masking Tape! – latifahsaafirstudios.com

Day 11 – September 11 – Sarah Ruiz – The Magic of Glue Basting – saroy.net

Day 12 – September 12 – Jen Shaffer – Ways to stop your ruler from slipping while cutting – patternsbyjen.blogspot.com

Day 13 – September 13 – Cheryl Sleboda – Basics of ruching (a vintage fabric manipulation technique) – muppin.com

Day 14 – September 14 – Raylee Bielenberg – Choosing quilting designs for your quilt – www.sunflowerstitcheries.com

Day 15 – September 15 – Jen Strauser – Accurate and Attractive Machine binding – dizzyquilter.com

Day 16 – September 16 – Jane Davidson – Matching points for all types of intersections – quiltjane.com

Day 17 – September 17 – Teresa Coates – Starch and starch alternatives – teresacoates.com

Day 18 – September 18 – Jen Frost – Benefits of spray basting – faithandfabricdesign.com

Day 19 – September 19 – Sandra Starley – Getting started with Hand Quilting – utahquiltappraiser.blogspot.com

Day 20 – September 20 – Karen Platt – Drunkard’s Path Made Easy – karenplatt.co.uk/blog/

Day 21 – September 21 – Kris Driessen – All Kinds of Square (in a Square) – scrapdash.com

Day 22 – September 22 – Sarah Goer – Planned Improv Piecing – sarahgoerquilts.com

Day 23 – September 23 – Kathy Bruckman – Organizing kits for on-the-go sewing – kathyskwiltsandmore.blogspot.com

Day 24 – September 24 – Cheryl Daines Brown – The Secret to Flat Quilt Tops: Borders – quilterchic.com

Day 25 – September 25 – Cherry Guidry – Pre-assembling fusible applique – cherryblossomsquilting.com

Day 26 – September 26 – Laura Chaney – Getting started with English Paper Piecing – prairiesewnstudios.com

Day 27 – September 27 – Ebony Love – Cutting Bias Strips from a Rectangle – lovebugstudios.com

Day 28 – September 28 – Tammy Silvers – Working with heavier weight threads in your machine – tamarinis.typepad.com

Day 29 – September 29 – Kathy Nutley – Create a perfect facing or frame with 90 degree angles – quiltingsbykathy.com

Day 30 – September 3 – Joanne Harris – Using Leaders and Enders – quiltsbyjoanne.blogspot.com

The post Tutorial – Sewing Long Seams Without Stretching Them appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

If you’ve followed me on this in the previous years (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018) you know that I’m not a terribly messy person. I find a tidy studio really inspiring and welcoming. I also frequently have friends over to sew at the weekend, or run classes in this space, so I’m always changing things around to fit the work or the people, and thus mess never lingers.

The first rule of tidying up is you have to do what WORKS FOR YOU. Please don’t use my tidy studio as a way to beat yourself up! There is no perfect way to do this – for me it happens when I hit some level of critical mass, often precluded by having a pile of something fall over on me!

I know people who find a lot of inspiration in spaces that have a lot going on in them – I just don’t happen to be one of them. In this world of so much perfect imagery coming at us, the most important thing is YOU DO YOU. Find out what needs to happen in your space to make you feel happy to be in it, and creatively motivated, and THAT is your perfect studio, or kitchen, or home!

Despite keeping a clean studio, I can have other stuff pile up on me, and in the last few months my books have been piled everywhere. On the kitchen table. In the living room. In the office. On the floor of my bedroom. So I decided to take care of those for this blog post – and I was happy to have a motivating deadline for getting it done!

I keep my bookshelves in my bedroom, and they were beginning to feel overloaded, and like they were looming over me.

No one pile was really out of hand, but the sum of the parts was making me a bit crazy.

First I went through each section and pulled things that no longer interested me. Either I’ve read it and I’m done with it, or I bought it when I was interested in something I’m no longer pursuing. And let’s face it, if I get interested in it again, I can always find the book again if I need it.

• Quilt books – I culled those that I no longer use for reference. They’ll go to my guild’s book library.
• Art technique books – I pulled those for art techniques I’m not working with any more. I doubt I will ever try landscape watercolor painting again!
• Language reference stuff – when I bought these books, I didn’t have a smartphone in my pocket, and now a lot of the information in those books can be found on the internet in seconds.
• Old travel guides – if I go back to those countries I’ll buy an updated version.
• Old magazines are off to the doctor’s office. I have a huge stack of Uppercase Magazine too… I love them, but I think I might need to gift them on as the evidence says I don’t usually go back to them once I read them. I’m several issues behind, so I might need to re-evaluate buying a subscription again, although dang, I do love to support a woman-owned publication!
• School books – I still had a few dusty art theory books from when I did my MFA in 2010. Trust me when I say some of these are the kind you only read when they’re assigned for homework, so the chance of me reading them again is zero!
• Entrepreneurial books – many of my entrepreneur friends often recommend this book or that, and I dutifully go buy them. And then they sit on my shelf for years. One wise biz friend (whose project planning methodology I use) told me instead to just look for a book to solve a problem when I was actively trying to solve the problem, and not to buy things that weren’t in the “working on this NOW” category. Good advice for keeping the book budget in check, and the clutter down.

The second rule is that you shouldn’t get rid of the things that make you happy, even if no one else sees the value of them!

I have more than a passing interest in mid-century pamphlet-style cookbooks. They were often published by a food manufacturer, and the books stretched to include that brand or ingredient in every single recipe. One of my favorite finds was this one, whose recipes all include salt. I know… salt?!

I also love the delightful mid-century illustrations:

And most of all, I find such humor in the recipes that sound just dreadful:

Once I had the books pared down, I re-grouped them by subject (I would LOVE to do it by color, but not having them categorized would make me itch!)

And then I shifted the placement for some of the subjects… I used to have quilting on one side of the room, and embroidery on the other. Now I feel like my categories flow a bit better, which means they can share shelves if needed. In the process, I reclaimed another shelf on which to store quilts, too.

Now it looks like this:

And this is the pile that I’ll be donating to my library once my friends have had a chance at them:

Oh… and here’s my tidy studio!

Please take a peek at the rest of the studios on the hop – you’re likely to find inspiration there!

April 29 – Linda Bratten – http://lindabcreative.blogspot.com/
April 30 – Sandra Johnson – http://www.sandrajohnsondesigns.com
May 1 – Jennifer Schifano Thomas – http://www.Curlicuecreations.com
May 2 – Becca Fenstermaker – http://www.prettypiney.com
May 3 – Sue Griffiths – http://www.duckcreekmountainquilting.com
May 4 – Kate Starcher – http://katiemaequilts.com/blog
May 5 – Jo Westfoot – http://www.thecraftynomad.co.uk/blog
May 6 – Sam Hunter – https://huntersdesignstudio.com <– you’re here!
May 7 – Simone Fisher – http://simonequilts.com/blogs/news
May 8 – Elisabeth DeMoo- http://www.brownbirddesignsquilts.com
May 9 – Sarah Myers –  http://www.quilted-diary.com/blog
May 10 – Amy Bradley – http://www.purplepineapplestudio.com
May 11 – Kathy Nutley – http://www.QuiltingsByKathy.com
May 12 – Carla Henton – http://createinthesticks.blogspot.com/
May 13 – Sherry Shish – http://www.poweredbyquilting.com
May 14 – Kate Colleran – http://www.seamslikeadream.com/blog
May 15 – Pamela Boatright – https://www.pamelaquilts.com/
May 16 – Cathy McKillip – http://wishuponaquilt.com/blog
May 17 – Cheryl Sleboda – http://blog.muppin.com

The post Spring Clean Your Studio – 2019 appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.