How to Quilt As You Go: The Back to Back Technique

[Music] hello welcome i'm pauline from pqw and i'm delighted you can join in this session i want to introduce you to my quilt as you go technique that i developed i call it the back to back technique now in developing this technique i needed to have the right tools so i want to introduce you to my sasha collection i have designed these many many years ago i am the original designer of these tools even though people are starting to copy me but we have the best products out of all of them this is a set of 10 now in my range i have 18 different sizes which means we can make any size sashing we want now i've called them the sasha collection because they are generally used to make sashings but you can use them to make your bindings you can use them to do bias strips you can use them to do fabric on the straight grain no matter what you're doing these tools will fold your fabric for you then once i started developing my technique with could as you go and i started getting lots of questions about it i decided to write my very very famous course you go handbook now this book is all about teaching you the different ways of putting your quotes together but as i said in this video i'm going to show you how i do my quilts in the back to back technique so my book goes through and shows you lots of things about setting up seam allowance i do put spare pages in the book because i want you to use this as your handbook so when you make your first quilt as you go quilt using my techniques write down your needle positions write down your seam allowances write down the measurements that you've cut your fabric for your sashings we go right through and we show you step by step in the book much more than what i can show you in this video so it is a really great guide to how to put your quilts together using the back to back technique lots of different sashing ideas it's not a design book there's no patterns in it it's all about the technique so go through and learn all the different things you can and it has my between the block technique as well so you can do a lot using this book now this little quilt i call it hearts abound it was my very first quilt i made using my back to back technique so when i'm producing a little quilt like this and it could be a much larger quilt any size quilt can be done like this if you've got a quilt that has a sashing running through it no matter what size your blocks are you can put it together in this technique i can't use blocks that have a quarter inch point so if i've got any piece blocks in the quilt that i'm making i cannot use this technique i have to use the between the block technique which you need to watch that video but here making these blocks up what i've done first is i sandwich my three layers together for each of these squares and each of these triangles i quilted each block first with my throat right through my three layers then i did my applique over the top of the quilting and then i've joined it together using what i call a double up sashing so you can put a single sashing on you can do a double sashing you can do sashings with little paper strips or flanges down the side you can do any sort of pieced sashing and we'll show you how to do that using our tools but i want to show you the back of this quilt because it just is lovely if you use the same fabric on the back of each block your quilt will look like it's one full piece of fabric on the back but it's not if you're looking very very closely you're going to see a seam line running through here so use a busy print fabric something that's fairly busy in its print use threads that blend in completely and when we seam our blocks together and put the sashing over the top of the seam you have nothing on the back there's no sashings going on the back with this technique it's all on the front so let's put this little quilt aside and we'll get started so now here we have some blocks that are made so i've as i said before we've pulled the blocks first we've done the applique over the top now i've quilted in a lovely cream thread in the top of the machine i had a cream thread in my bobbin because it blended in with the backing fabric but when i do my appliques over the top of the quilting i have the monopoly clear thread in my top and my bobbin of my machine so when i stitch these on whether i use a straight stitch whether i do a free motion like sketchy applique or where i might do blanket stitch by machine i always have that monopoly thread in the bobbin then when you look closely at the back you don't see that i've stitched the appliques on after i've quilted so once you've got that done trim your blocks back to size to what they should be then we simply put our blocks wrong sides to wrong sides back to back back to back then we're going to seam a seam down here between the two blocks and this is what it'll look like so go through and join all of those blocks together like such now i usually use about a 3 8 inch seam here because i find a quarter inch seam is just too narrow now we want to press this seam flat but if we press with the hot iron because we've got the batting in that seam you find that it won't stay down flat so use your roxanne glue baste it this is a wonderful wonderful product it is water soluble so it's always going to wash out of your quilt it doesn't clog up on your needle it doesn't stick to the iron and as i said it washes out so i'm just running the glue underneath the seam then grab your hot iron and press so that hot iron is now going to set the glue you can let it sit naturally but it's going to take 20 minutes to half an hour and if you like me you never have time to do that so go through and do that with all of your blocks as you join them together so i usually join two blocks together and then i'll go through and make the sashing now to make the sashing whatever size tool you're going to use we'll just come back to these tools now we have in here 10 different sizes so we can go right up to a two and a half inch wide sashing i'm going to make a one inch wide sashing so i'll get the one inch tool out of the pack and i'm also going to use the half inch tool so the measurements written on the tool is your finished size and you will always need to cut your fabric double that measurement so for a one inch i cut my fabric two inches wide so here i have my fabric cut two inches wide i'm just going to fold in and until it meets just press about the first inch now that's going to allow you to put it into the sasher tool accurate because if it doesn't go inaccurate it's not going to come out accurate so the one inch tool i'm going to hold it by the handle and i'm going to thread up and back down it's very very easy to thread now i'm going to pin this end into my ironing surface and here's a little tip for you when i made this quilt here as i said it was my first quilt when i was ironing the stripe fabric because that's one piece of fabric from side to side it's not too small pieces it's one piece i pinned into my ironing surface with two separate pins i pinned this side and then i pinned that side but as i started to iron my stripes started to run off skew and i realized at that point that because i put the pins in separately i didn't get equal tension on both sides of that stripe fabric that's when i decided to start using the double fork pin this is a twin pin two prong pin now when i pin into my ironing surface either side of that pin goes on either side of that fabric and because i pin in together i'm getting equal tension so my stripe fabric will not stretch it will all stay even so that's just a little tip now cup up the side the side of the sacher tool i designed that with a curve to sit the side of the iron into no matter what size iron you use you just put the iron against the tool and you push and you just keep pushing cupping up the edges now iron about 10 12 to 15 inches and it's much easier on your bigger ironing board remove the pin and reposition the pin so it catches either side of that fabric and just keep coming down so you can make any size sashing exactly like this just run the iron over it up and down a couple of times to get the nice heat in to keep that that crease there nicely so we have our seam glued down we'll now put the sashing over the top and once again i use the rocks and glue basically because i find if i pin this in place as i start just pin in it's going to distort this and it won't say night stay nice and straight so i find the glue is the best tool i can ever have for this and i tried many glues but i found the roxanne glue was the one that didn't clog to my needle didn't stick it always washes out when i wash the quilt and ironing over it and it doesn't stick to your own is fantastic so just press that so now everything is held in place perfectly even while we go to the machine and stitch that so i would come now and i'd have the mono poly thread in my bobbin and in the top of the machine still and i will do a row of stitching really close on the edge and the best foot on your machine to use for this is the open toe foot and move your needle position over so you want the edge of the foot sitting right against the edge of the fabric and you want your needle sitting on the inside edge of the fabric and stitch your straight row stitching straight down there then we'd cut this off we join all our blocks together like that and then we join the rows together now when we join the rows together it can be a bit tricky because it gets quite bulky here at the seam so in my quilt as you go handbook i show you exactly how to grade out that that bulk that comes in here but if you want to take this a step further like i did with the little quilt i showed you before cut yourself an inch strip of fabric and we'll fold that in this time in and in on both sides till it meets now will put this through the half inch tool you know because if i was going to go through and fold this all the way through to make a big quilt i'd be burning my fingers but using the tool you don't get any burnt fingers whatsoever up and down pin and then we just hold it over and we push with the iron till we get that whole strip done and you can see how easy that is just run that iron back across it to get plenty of heat in then we simply glue that over the top of the first one just lay it down you can see how gorgeous it looks when you start to layer up you know you can really dress it up you might put one layer down you think just not doing anything try a second layer and you'll be delighted so you'll run the glue under both sides there you'll then go and stitch that on and you'll join your whole quilt together like that if you're going to put borders on the quilt quilt the borders first and your borders would be joined to your quilt exactly like this back to back so i'd join the borders on then i'd put a sashing over it so it's a very very simple technique it is all covered in my book and i'm very proud of this book that we've been able to hit the best sellers list with this because it does take you through step by step and do look at the measurement chart here i've got all the measurements worked out for you for different sashings do use your spare pages to write all of your information on so when you make your second quilted you go cooked you've got everything here so enjoy my back to back technique enjoy my book and particularly enjoy my sasha collection because i've designed them especially for you they won't melt like the fake ones do these are the genuine tools we own the rights to them i'm the designer i own the intellectual property to them so thank you for joining us join in our between the block coolest you go technic because it's totally different and you might want to see how we do that so subscribe to our youtube channel hit that bell so that you get notifications when we put new videos out and also have a look at our website because we've got some fantastic tools our website is www.pqw.com.a you till next time thank you bye [Applause] you

Channel: Pauline's Quilters World

Views: 18,903

Rating: 4.8418078 out of 5

Keywords: Pauline's Quilters World, pqw, quilting, pauline rogers, sasher tools, sashers, quilt as you go techniques, quilt as you go, qayg, how to quilt as you go quilts, quilt as you go Pauline Rogers, quilt as you go back to back technique, quilt as you go beginners, quilt as you go handbook, quilt as you go blocks with sashing, learn to quilt as you go, how to quilt as you go

Id: M0GS5Rxhzt4

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021