Tips

From time to time I will post tips that come to me and I find useful. This feature will be updated every time I hear or come up with something.

1. Use empty travel shampoo, conditioner, or lotion bottles to store your needles. I was listening to Sandy's podcast Quilting for The Rest Of Us, and She was talking about charity quilting. Someone commented that they're collecting the complimentary shampoos, etc. bottles from the hotels while  on vacation and donate them to charities. That gave me an idea since I have tons of those and some of them quiet old so I'll have to dump them to keep the containers with the screw tops and put my needles in them. You can also use empty prescription bottles, or if you have them laying around some empty old film tubes.
2. To identify which bobbin has what thread, put a reinforcement label on your bobbin and mark the type of thread and color code with a fine tip sharpie.
3. When making flying geese units or half square triangles and you need to mark a sewing line across the square,  lay the fabric on a 100 grid (or any fine) sandpaper so it does not move while you're drawing the line. I use technique all the time and it's a breeze to mark my patches.
4. When sewing the binding on and coming to the mitered corner cut the batting off in an angle so   it's easier to fold the fabric to miter because it will not be as thick. At my last finished quilt (Lili's flowers) I used this method at 1 of the corners because that was no way I could turn the fabric over to miter AND cover everything, it was too thick. I just snipped off the batting and it came out perfect! I'll do the binding this way from now on.
5. When paper piecing, cover the ironing surface with a sheet of freezer paper to prevent the ink from the foundation paper to burn into the ironing board cover
6. When paper piecing and finished with the blocks I put washable glue to hold the paper in place while sewing the blocks together. This way the paper doesn't shift and the seam allowance will be perfect on both sides.
7. While free motion quilting I bury the threads as I go. This helps me saving the extra work at the end when I'm done with the binding. Plus it's a lot easier to do it as I go because in  the past I was having a hard time finding the threads especially on a large quilt that has busy fabrics.