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Learning to cut was intimidating because I was paranoid that the blade would slip and I would either slice a huge gash in my fabric or hurt myself and I really didn’t want either of those things to happen. I learned to be careful when cutting. I heard that some people can just eyeball it and cut straight lines, but I didn’t want to risk it, so I cut against a guide to keep my blade straight.
Pressing is pretty straightforward, although it’s not the same as ironing. Ironing is when you use the iron and use the steam to pull the fabric under the iron. That’s used when your fabric isn’t quite square and it’s too small to trim and square up but the bias still stretches so you can get a little more give from the fabric. You also have to iron down some seams, especially when the top is almost finished and there are layers upon layers of seams and they don’t want to lay flat. Pressing is when you set the iron on top of the fabric and let it sit for a few seconds to relax wrinkles with steam or set starch with heat. Then you pick the iron up and move it to the next place. It takes a while and you have to do it in between each step to make sure your seams are all pressed the right way and your pieces are lying flat, but it’s not necessarily a hard step.
Sewing by far took the longest amount of time. I had never really learned how to use a sewing machine, and I think the first day I learned how it worked and I tried sewing pieces together, I ended up having to rip the seams of at least half of what I’d sewed. Once I learned how to find the quarter inch of the machine and stick to it, it went much easier. I spent a lot of time troubleshooting. The machine was very finicky and would catch threads and the bobbin thread would get tangled and snag. I’d have to take out my fabric, open the hatch to access the bobbin, pull it out, figure out how to get the knot out, rethread the bobbin, put the bobbin back, rethread the machine and hope it worked. Sometimes it would immediately catch again and I’d have to do the process all over again. I learned to use leaders and enders so that not as much fabric would catch. Leaders and enders are just scraps of fabric that you sew through the machine before or after you sew on a point. The fabric doesn’t catch on the machine as much but then you have to sit down and cut them all apart when you’re done. I definitely think that I spent the most amount of time on this step, but I will always know how to use a sewing machine, which I’m sure will come in handy even if I never make another quilt.
Quilting was probably the most fun step for me. The whole process took most of the day but it was very enjoyable. I decided to show pictures of the machine in my photo documentation as well as some of the commands that are used in programming in my research, but I decided against showing any video clips because it's really a process that you just have to see for yourself.
Binding was one of the hardest steps for me because it consisted mostly of hand sewing. This was the most hand sewing I’d ever done and my fingers felt like they were burned when I was done because I’d stabbed myself with the needle so many times. I used a machine to sew the binding on to the front side but then I had to pin it to the other and hand sew it down so that the stitches were as invisible as possible
Thank you so much for taking the time to watch these, and I hope it was informative. Please let me know if you have any questions.
-Allison
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