2
quilting techniques to improve
speed and accuracy Elaine Theriault
I never seem to have a shortage of quilting topics
to talk about on QUILTsocial, however I do have
time management issues. Of course – I have time
management issues all the time.
To help me out, there are lots of time saving features
in the quilting world. And remember that old saying “a
stitch in time saves nine”?
If you take the time to perfect the two areas we are
talking about today, you’ll become a much more accurate
sewer and save time to boot. How awesome is that?
Read on and see what I'm talking about.
Husqvarna Viking Designer Ruby Royale
I spend a lot of time teaching classes and I get a lot of
questions about technical issues in the quilting world. I
thought it would be good to address two issues that I see
over and over again since both are related to the sewing
machine. I’m going to use the Ruby Royale as my guinea
pig as I walk you through what causes these issues and
how to fix them.
Stitch Length
If you are a garment or home decorator sewer, your sewing
techniques and sewing machine settings differ substantially
from those of a quilter. When I learned how to sew clothing way
back when, I learned to start and stop seams with a back stitch
to ensure that the seams were not going to pull open at the
ends.
Three strips joined together in a strip set
All computerized sewing machines are set with a default stitch
length which seems to vary between 2.0 and 3.0. The default on
the Ruby Royale is 2.5. My rationale for this is that sewing machines are mostly used for garment or home dec sewing. Gasp!!
You mean sewing machines are not made for quilters? Nope – I
could be making that up, but there are a lot of non-quilters who
are purchasing sewing machines.
Depending on the pattern, quilter’s have unique methods like
strip piecing and chain piecing which means that the end of
each seam is not secured.
For those not in the know, strip piecing means joining several
strips together along the long side and then sub cutting them
into sections.
You can see from the above example that it would be very hard
to back stitch between those sections since the seams were
initially sewn as one seam. To cut the pieces individually and
secure each beginning and end would be very time consuming.
Strip set cut into sub sections
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