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How to Hang a Quilt Tutorial

Posted by Amy on January 18th, 2012

As I was hanging up some of my quilts recently, I was thinking that some of you might be interested to know how I’m doing this without any visible hanging mechanism showing.

I learned this method from the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and figured if it’s good enough for a museum, it’s surely good enough for me! And that you folks out there might like to know how it’s done as well.

First thing you’ll need to do is make a sleeve for the back of your quilt. I didn’t take any photos of this process, but it should be wide enough to fit whatever you are using as a hanger, and a little narrower than your quilt. I cut my strips 6 inches wide, then sewed them in half down the long side with a 1/2″ seam allowance. I pressed the seam open so that it was oriented down the middle of the strip, and then laid the strip with the seam side against the quilt. I don’t bother to do any finishing to the seam OR to the short ends of the sleeve. Not really necessary.

Here’s the slowest step: hand sew the sleeve to the back of the quilt. No way around this really. And it doesn’t have to be pretty, it just needs to be secure.

Okay, now here’s what you’ll need to get it up on the wall:

1. Quilt with sleeve attached
2. Piece of wood or dowel for hanger. Make sure it is thick enough to put your screw eyes (see below) into. Mine was a piece of pine 1/4″ thick by 1 5/16″ wide. It was less than $1 a board foot. We were able to cut it to length and buy however much we wanted at the Home Depot.
3. Two screw eyes – here’s a photo of the ones I used

4. Straight edge
5. Pencil
6. Hacksaw (or your favorite tool) for cutting the wood or dowel.
7. Sandpaper

Step one: Lay the wood or dowel on the quilt to see how long you need to cut it. You want it long enough so that when you screw the screw eyes into the end they will stick out past the hanger but NOT past the edge of the quilt.

Step two: Use the straight edge and the pencil to mark a line where you need to cut.

Step three: Cut the wood or dowel. Sorry, I don’t have a photo of this step, because I was cutting! This is the most fun step, by the way. Who doesn’t love tools?? Use the sandpaper to sand the cut edges so they don’t snag your quilt.

Step four: Screw your screw eyes into the end of the wood or dowel. I did this with my hands – no other tools required. If you are having trouble screwing them in, try holding the screw eye with vice grips, or putting a pencil or something through the eye that you can use to turn it.

Step five: Check to see that everything looks good. The screw eyes should stick out past the hanging sleeve but not past the edge of the quilt.

Step six: Put the hanger into the sleeve.

Voila! You are ready to hang!

Here’s what you need to hang your quilt:

1. Hammer
2. Two nails
3. Level (if you care that much)
4. Oh, and maybe a pencil

I don’t have photos of this either, but all you need to do is take your quilt with the hanger in the sleeve and hold it up on the wall where you want it (this, of course, may require a helper so you can step back and look). Check to see that it’s level, then mark the spots through the centers of the screw eyes with the pencil. Hammer a nail into the center of each circle you marked and hang the quilt on the nails.

(You can even see here where I screwed up and hung this one crooked the first time and had to go back and redo it. That’s what I get for doing these without a helper!)

It’s so simple, that I can’t believe I didn’t figure this out by myself. Note that if you are hanging big quilts, you will likely want bigger, sturdier wood. The museum told me they hang big quilts on what is essentially flat baseboard molding. Who knew?

Happy Hanging!

Mosaic Piecing Tutorial

Posted by Amy on February 28th, 2011

First off on this Monday morning, I wanted to tell you that I’m *definitely* participating in Project Selvage.You’ve heard of it by now I’m sure, but Spoonflower and Michael Miller are teaming up to find the next fabric designer for Michael Miller fabrics. It’s very exciting, but I think the theme (Baby Boy) is pretty challenging! I already have ideas swimming around in my little brain.

What I really want to talk to you about today is the mosaic quilt that I’ve been making. I actually have it AND it’s partner quilt — a second quilt based on the same photograph — ready to have the binding hand-stitched to the back. I don’t have any photos to share with you right now, but I thought it might be nice to post a tutorial on how I did the piecing.

I spent HOURS arranging all these little 2″ squares, and I was concerned that I would make myself crazy trying to keep them all straight as I was piecing the quilt, so I devised this little plan and wanted to share it with you.

Mosaic Piecing Tutorial

In order to keep the order and orientation of the pieces straight while I was piecing them, I used a masking tape system that worked out great. I put a tiny piece of masking tape on each of the 20 squares in the first row. Each piece of masking tape had a little folded over tab at the top that made it easy to take off later. I put the labels in the centers of the squares (approximately) to keep them out of the way of the stitching. I could easily tell which way was right-side up, because the little tabs were at the top.

Masking tape works great because 1) it isn’t very tacky so it doesn’t leave weird residue on the fabric, 2) it’s tacky enough to stay put for the time you need it to stay put and to reuse multiple times, and 3) it’s cheap.

Here’s a close-up of the masking tape labels.

And here’s the first row all labeled up.

Once the row was labeled, I moved it over to my ironing board that sits next to my sewing machine.

I sewed all the squares for this quilt together using chain piecing, which requires you to just keep sewing between the pairs and not cut the seams. You should check that your machine is okay with this before you do it (my Viking doesn’t mind a bit). Also, I always start and end on a scrap so that I only really start sewing one time. This saves a lot of time and eliminates a lot of problems that can occur at the beginning of your stitching.

Here you can see my starter scrap in the back — the little yellow piece with multiple lines of stitching on it — followed by the first pair of squares.

I chain pieced pairs together for the entire row — square 1 to square 2, square 3 to square 4, etc. Here they all are laid out on my ironing board, still attached to one another with the starter scrap on the left. The scrap I used at the end is still under the presser foot on the sewing machine.

Keeping them all in order, I clipped them apart. (By the way, I could not live without these 4″ Gingher snips. So wonderful!)

Here they are all cut apart.

Then I opened up the pairs and sewed pairs of pairs together. So, I sewed the 1/2 pair to the 3/4 pair.

Then the 5/6 pair to the 7/8 pair, and so on. I continued chain piecing throughout.

At the end of this round of piecing I had 5 sets of squares. Here they are still attached to each other and the starter scrap.

Opened out they look like this. Note that I haven’t pressed any seams yet! This makes the sewing way faster and lets me keep all my labels on without having to worry about avoiding them with the iron.

Next up, I sewed the first two sets together and the third and fourth set together. The fifth set had to wait out this round.

Then I sewed what are now the second and third sets together (squares 9-20). The reason I didn’t just attach the two larger sets to each other is that I think piecing goes more smoothly if the two parts you are sewing together are closer to the same size. If I piece the 1-8 section to the 9-16 section, I would have ended up with one section of 16 pieces and one of 4 pieces. The way I did it keeps it slightly more even.

Then, I pieced the very last seam. Note that I am still doing the chain piecing at this point, with a starter scrap, my single pieced seam, and an ending scrap.

Once I had the row finished, I transferred all the masking tape labels to the next row on the design wall. You shouldn’t need the labels on the pieced row any longer because you’ll be able to double-check the proper orientation for it against your photo of the quilt laid out (you do always take a photo when you’ve decided on your layout don’t you? I refer back to these photos often to make sure I haven’t switched anything around).

It’s finally time to press. I decided at the beginning of this that I was going to press all the seams open. That’s because 1) the pieces were such different values that I didn’t want them showing through light fabrics in places, 2) I had already developed a quilting plan that meant I was going to be quilting across all these open seams multiple times to help reinforce them, and 3) it would allow me to save all the pressing to the end!

I recommend first either finger pressing all the seams open…

…or using a hera marker to do this. I chose the hera marker because my wimpy fingernails would never have made it through the entire quilt finger pressing! I don’t usually do this step before pressing with the iron, but I thought it would make the iron pressing go a lot more smoothly because all these little tiny seams are so close together.

Then, I pressed all the seams with an iron on the back side…

…and flipped the finished row over and pressed it from the front.

Once I completed sewing each of the individual rows together, I switched all the labels to the first square in each row and assembled the rows. I’ll admit to you that I did not pin this quilt at all. I just matched up each of the seams as I went. It turned out pretty well!

I opted to press the longer seams to one side, because I wasn’t going to be sewing across them. When pressing to one side, I find it easier to press as I go, so after each seam. Since you’ll keep the masking tape labels on throughout this assembly (or at least one label per sewn-up section), be sure when you press these seams that you do not press the masking tape label on that first block, as it can get very yucky when you do that!

Questions or anything you think is unclear? Let me know!

Light Me Up Lamp Shade Slip Cover Tutorial

Posted by Amy on August 20th, 2010

This is so easy you’ll be making these in your sleep!

As part of my Open House preparations I wanted to do a quick reversible makeover of the lamp shades in our bedroom. What better than little slip covers? These were SO easy to make that I’m now tempted to cover all the drab off-white lamp shades in our house. I have not yet tested this on the more squarish lamp shades, but I have a feeling that it will work pretty much the same.

Basically, these are little bands of fabric with elastic at the top and bottom. I went with a slightly unorthodox method of not sewing the side seam until after I made the casings, because trying to fold under the hem for the casings after it was already a circle was way too hard. I’m all for making it easy!

Enjoy!

Light Me Up Lamp Shade Slip Cover Tutorial

Materials

One piece of fabric big enough to trace your lamp shade plus about 4 inches. This will depend on how big your lamp shade is, so you’ll just have to test it. My fairly small lamp shade required about 3/4 of a yard.
Thread
1/4 inch wide elastic — measure the circumference of both the top and bottom of your lamp and add them together. You’ll need about 2/3 of this length.

Instructions

1. Trace your lamp shade onto the wrong side of your fabric. Start with a point on your shade that you will recognize when you get back to it again — I started at the shade’s seam. Roll the shade over the fabric, tracing the arc that the top of the shade makes as you go. Stop when the point on the shade where you started is back to the fabric again.

2. Then roll the shade back and trace the arc the bottom of the shade makes. Or you can trace them both at the same time by rolling the shade and tracing a few inches at a time of both the top and bottom, then rolling the shade a bit further, tracing some more, etc.

3. Once you have the outline of the shade, draw lines to connect the ends of the top and bottom arcs. In the photo below, this is the inner shape. We need to add some extra for seam allowances and casings, so add 1/2″ to each short end and 2″ to each of the arcs. The outer shape below is your final pattern piece for your slip cover.

4. Cut out your slip cover along the outside lines.

5. Turn up both the top and bottom arcs 3/4 inch.

6. Press.

7. Unfold that 3/4 inch and press under 1/4 inch. If you really wanted to you could press under the 1/4 inch first, followed by pressing another 1/2 inch. I just find pressing the full amount first is more accurate in the end.

Take your time with the turning and pressing. Because of the curves this is kind of fussy, but it’s the only hard part. After this, you’re practically home free!

This is what it looks like when both curves have been turned under twice and pressed.

8. Pin. I recommend pinning here, since the curves and the bias edges make this not want to behave so well.

9. Stitch both of the long curved edges near the folded edge to form the casings for the elastic.

10. Cut two pieces of elastic to 2/3 of the circumference of each circle. If the top of your lamp is 21 inches and the bottom of your lamp is 30 inches, then cut the elastic for the top casing to 14 inches long and the elastic for the bottom casing to 20 inches long. Insert the elastic into the casings. I stick a safety pin through the end of the elastic and feed it through. If you actually own a bodkin, please feel free to use that!

11. When you get the elastic through, line up the end of the elastic with the end of the casing and pin about 3/4 inch from the end.

This is what it looks like when you have all four ends pinned.

12. Fold the slip cover in half with the right sides together so that the two short ends are lined up with each other. It should look like this.

13. Sew a 1/2 inch seam. This seam will also secure the elastic.

14. Finish this seam allowance. I used the seam/overcast stitch on my machine. A zig-zag is good too. This just makes it look neat and keeps it from unraveling when you wash it.

15. Press the seam and turn right side out. Slip onto your lamp shade. Here’s the top view on the lamp shade.

And here’s the front view.

And here it is on the lamp. Pretty cute, eh? And super duper easy!

Please let me know if you need any clarifications.

This was really fun and could easily be customized with all kinds of trims. You could also trace the shade onto paper (tape pieces together to get something big enough if you need to), and sew strips of fabric together until you have something big enough to lay your pattern piece on. Like an improv quilt as a lamp shade! I might have to try that! This time I was aiming for simple and not too attention-grabbing, since I want the focus to be on the quilts!

This tutorial and loads of other free tutorials are indexed at Kostenlose-schnittmuster.de. The site is in German, but you can view the category list in English, and the tutorials are in a variety of languages.

Linda’s Laptop Sleeve

Posted by Amy on June 22nd, 2010

Another awesome reader, Linda, has made a laptop sleeve using my Laptop Sleeve Tutorial. And she sent me photos to put up!

She also made a pouch for her extra battery and a draw-string bag for her mouse, powercord, and other accessories. Cute!

I love seeing all the different closure methods people use for this. Linda said she “used Velcro to fasten the flap and sewed buttons on the flap to somewhat hide the zigzag stitching on the outside.” Great idea!

Linda says, “I think the construction of the lining and flap is so clever and makes such a neat finish. I’m really happy with how it came out – plus, it is so functional!”

Thanks, Linda! I’ve been pretty happy with the response to this little pattern. It’s already one of the most popular pages on my blog!

Holly’s Laptop Sleeve

Posted by Amy on April 11th, 2010

Check out what Holly made using my laptop sleeve tutorial. Looks fabulous — LOVE the robots!!

I love it when you guys share with me projects you’ve made using my tutorials!

I have a sewing lesson to get to, but my Amish mini quilt is coming along nicely (it’s ready for quilting and I think by hand would be oh so nice) and I’ve started a new knitting project for the Bobbin’s Nest — a lace cowl! Stay tuned!

How to Hang a Quilt Tutorial