Longarm a Vintage Quilt Top--Quilt out fullness with starch and steam

[Music] hey it's kelly i'm getting ready to start on a vintage top and i thought you all would like to join me on the long arm and see how that process works so i hope you'll enjoy the video if you have any questions please just ask me in the comments thanks vintage tops what do you do with them decided i'm going to take you on this journey i'm going to video each step of the way i have this beautiful top that i found in a antique shop in augusta kansas i believe it was 25 and it's just gorgeous the fabrics are gorgeous the piecing is well done but no matter what i think back when and you know you they were using cut templates you cannot get anything perfect and i don't worry about perfect you know uh things were just different back back when uh the back you would be forever and a day trying to press this from the back so i never worry about trying to do that i just put it on my ironing board i take my iron and i begin to try and simply flatten the seams so i just do a all over pressing i go through the whole quilt do a very quick press i don't care i don't worry about these creases that i have in here just trying to get it to lay somewhat flat and when i get it to the long arm i will start dealing with all of these spaces with starch and steam so we will come back here momentarily and i will get this on the long arm and we'll take it from there alrighty all right now i've pressed it as much as i could on the ironing board and i've draped it over my long arm and now i'm just going to take a spray bottle of water just any any water and i'm just gonna go along and spray the whole thing back and forth gonna do the whole thing and then i'm gonna let it just sit for oh maybe you know 15-20 minutes and let some of the rest of the wrinkles fall out a little bit and then i'm going to load my backing and i won't meet you back here for that okay i've got my backing loaded and then i've got batting the batting i really like for my general quilting is hobbs heirloom 80 20. i like when it washes it crinkles like the old-time old-time quilts hobbs also does not require a correct top or bottom so you can put it on anyway there's no right or wrong way to to use it as there are with some battings okay so i've put my batting down and then i've just laid my top on top of the whole thing so i've used a i have a handy quilter forte and i use a glide foot with almost everything that's going to be an edge to edge the great thing about this glide foot or a spoon foot cup foot on other machines is that it will go over all of this all of this fullness also works great for applique for crocheted items things like that so the way i start and there is really no there it's it's that you work it out you just work it out there's no real rule there's no way but this is what works well for me so i'm just going to start somewhere across the top pull up my bobbin thread and then i'm going to let's see let me get get a base stitch in here which i think i have my stitch though needs to be i like it to be about seven stitches per inch so let's look at that so i'm on six all right all right so what i'm gonna do is just manipulate across the top with my hand and i'm not i don't have my gears uh set down so it's in a free motion free motion quilting right now so i'm going to just manipulate and hold this down while i stitch so this is very free motion quilting you could kind of zigzag across the raw edge if you wanted i could do that too just anything to lay down that top edge i try and work out any wrinkles there are and move along manipulate pull a little bit stop at the intersection then move along pull a little bit lay it so it's just manipulating across that whole scallop edge so you can see what i'm doing all across this whole top i'm just going to work that in maneuver it manipulate it do what i need to do to do to get it on the frame so i will be back once we get that on and show you what it looks like so i finished going across that top edge that scallop you can see i just stitched as it was worked it out and then when i get to the corner right here i just baste down the side in the same fashion so i have just basted and you see it stretched and so my batting was not quite wide enough but i'm you know i'm gonna fudge a little bit and when i bind it it'll it'll be fine i'm not worried too much about it this is not about perfection just you have to know vintage quilting is never about anything being perfect so i'm sure most of you are looking at this and thinking what in the world how is she going to quilt that right so i went back to the left side and again i basted down this side there's a chunk missing right here so i just baste it inside the way that is and now i'm going to take this whole thing i do float my tops but i'm going to take the whole thing the batting and the top and work it under this bar right here so i'll come back after i've done that and you'll see once i pull and tug and and work that out this will tighten a whole bunch alrighty here is what i call the magic so i've put this underneath the bar i've pulled everything a little bit taut so i just take both the batting i've got the batting and the top and i just give everything a little bit of tug before i tighten so i pull that just a little bit to get everything snug then i will go lock in the end and then i usually try to loosen it up just a notch because if it's too tight whoops okay hold on if it's too tight and too taut then sometimes your thread will break but i am using uh schmett's long arm ballpoint needles and those uh are the the next magic because anything you do here uh left to right right to left your thread will not shred or break and especially with fragile materials the nice thing about a ballpoint is that they spread fibers and do not cut them so if you have to unpick or unsew i guess pick out any thread you will not have holes left when you are finished okay so that's what it looks like right now so the next step is to use good old heavy duty faultless niagara something people ask if you can use best press i'm not sure i just i've always used the good old starch so i give it a spray i it was already a little bit damp from me spraying it before i'm gonna move my long arm out of the way so i'm not spraying that so i give it a good spray okay so i may go get a cup of coffee i may walk away for just a little bit i like that to soak in before i steam it but what i'm going to do next i've got this really nice steamer let's look at this so homedics i got it at costco let's look at this for a second it plugs in so it's plug in and it sits in its little base you put water in it and then when you lift it it steams this is probably the coolest tool i have found i think you can get it on amazon but costco uh it was 39.99 so all you do is start going over this whole thing steam it uh normally i would be using my left hand to kind of move it manipulate it so once you start this steam and starch method believe it or not most of these wrinkles will all go away and you'll be able to quilt this flat when you start out you think this would never ever work but i have been known to pull six inches out of a quilt just by doing this but you can do this for wavy borders you can do this for you know these type of quilts that have all of this piecing because this piecing will all get sucked up all that excess fabric will just tighten right up and then when i walk away from this again when i come back probably in 10 minutes it will have changed even more so i'm gonna put you all put this down for a minute walk away go have a cup of coffee and we will take a look at that in 10 minutes and see how it looks okay okay i'm ready to go the design i've chosen today is called lacy paisley to b which stands for border to border uh by anne bright these are called border to border because if you were to have a border on the outside of this her b2b designs will fit precisely within that border so it's a little different than an edge to edge but they work really nice for within a border or an edge to edged edge all right so when i have a lot of lines geometrics i like to choose curvy lines this one has a lot of open area but it also is dense enough that it will touch i hope every little piece so this is how it looks like what it looks like after i've let it sit i've i've spray starched it i've steamed it i have not cleaned this yet you can see i've not cleaned this so i'm going to do that when it's all finished this one did not have a smell so i felt like i could work with it before i clean it now we've got a few still a few wrinkles but you'll see that as i work this i will be holding some of this so that it will not wrinkle as it stitches out and you'll just watch in the next little segment how i do that so i'll get it going here just a minute [Applause] [Applause] all right so i'm going to pause this for a minute and you can see how i was touching this as it was going over the slightest little wrinkles just to make sure that that did not fold over now yeah there's a little wrinkle there but once that gets a little bit of water on it or it gets washed that will come right out so what i try and do is just make sure that there aren't any pleats i try and just let it get over it now if the maker created a pleat i'm not going to worry too much about it but for the most part this is turning out really flat i haven't gotten any folds pleats but you can see when she pieced it she's got a few little pleats so i don't worry too much about what my quilting looks like because when it's all finished it will be gorgeous now if there's a little little tiny hole right there i may come in and put some little patch over it i have some ideas for this when it's finished so we'll see we'll see what happens with that but i don't feel like these are going to be too heavily used this was lucky that it got stitched over so i'm happy about that uh another little spot that i this right here do you remember this had a this had a tear in it so i just found some vintage fabric that was close to the blue i'm not again i'm not terribly concerned because i've got you know there's a lot of fading in this quilt it's not a masterpiece quilt it's a utilitarian quilt so somebody made this to use i'm not worrying too much about it because i just want to get it quilted so i just created that shape that melon shape i i put a little seam in there and then i just put some 505 spray based on it and put that just stuck it right on there on my long arm let the design go over it and then probably when it's finished i may whip along this edge just to st to sew it down but that's how i deal with patches and things i don't make them too fancy i don't fuss over it too much because my goal is to get this finished you'll notice when an edge edge is going along it's a little bit loud and i do wear earplugs so i wear molded earplugs and if you want to know where to get those just pm me or comment and i will put a link to those earplugs because when my machine is going full blast on the computer i always always wear all right ready let's keep going okay i'm ready to roll to the second row and whether you're doing this free motion or you're using a computer i do each row as it comes so i've pulled this next row and like i did the first time i'm going to give each little section a tug i would be doing this with two hands if i had them but you'll get the idea so i give this a tug move this over i'm right on the edge of my batting because i was in a hurry and i didn't i didn't measure well all right so i'm going to lock this up tighten it up i will baste down the sides i'll pull a little bit i'll do my basting and then once again i will do my spray and my starch i'll start with water give it a little bit of mist then i'll go back with some starch and then take my steamer over the whole thing all right i will baste both edges so i will baste down this side like i did up in the first row and then i will baste down the second side and then start to spray let it sit and then steam over the whole piece and then i will be ready to stitch out that row all right here we are with uh my bobbin that just ran out and so i always have to pick out a few stitches so i can get it started again so this is what i was telling you about with the schmetz ballpoint needles you've got the holes that are left over so to get rid of those holes this is what i do give it a little spray of water i hardly have to do this take my fingernail and you have no holes with a sharp whether you know it or not when you're using a sharp needle a sharp will cut those fibers so you will always have holes left in regular fabric but even in like batiks fragile fabrics you will never have holes left with a ball point so that's the that's the beauty of a ballpoint needle okay let's see how it's looking i'm on my second row and it looks pretty darn good uh you know the thing that also happens when you have these little wrinkles i think of it like um oh like a teeter-totter like when when it's stitching here it's puffing up the fabric here so uh that just seems to happen throughout the quilt so the the batting takes up some of that wrinkle um if you really have a wrinkly or a you know a wavy wavy quilt top you may want to use a polyester high loft batting because that will fill those areas that are so wavy and and have so much excess fabric but i think this one's looking pretty good so far alrighty i'm about halfway through this i'm going to roll to the next row and i did a quick fix i'm going to see if you all can see where it's at i'm going to just scan this quilt do you remember i had a hole in it and i just wanted to fix it while it's on the long long arm i'm not particular but looky there so i have lots of feed sacks so i decided just to put a patch in so i've just put a square of fabric let's see if i can find this is the piece that i put in so i just put in a piece like that and i put it underneath that fabric laid it on top i've put some elmer's washable glue and for now i'm going to just leave it like that but i suspect that i will come back and maybe put a flower or some kind of a i'm not sure yet i'm going to think on that i got to dream on that one a little bit but i put glue you can see where i've put glue around this perimeter and i just basically glued it down and then in the next row it's going to get quilted it'll be quilted in and it may be that i do some embroidery work or some stitching or i might find a piece of blue that can go in there and be you know just hand whipped in i'm just not sure yet but i did want to make a patch so i think i made a pretty good patch and really looking at that whole quilt i'm pretty sure you would never pick it out because it's such a busy quilt all right that's my quick fix and there's one more hole right here and i'm gonna do that same thing and uh we'll see we'll see what happens all right i am on the last row and it's gone very well i've starched and steamed the heck out of this and so it is flat now nothing in this is square it's close but when you have curved piecing you have melons it's going to be really hard for anything here to be square so i like to use the term respect the maker's work so just do it the way she she has it don't worry too much about square and and as i say don't ever worry about perfection in a vintage quilt you see i have another hole and i'm just going to patch it again i'm going to run over it with that quilt pattern and then i'll come back and see what i'm going to do later but what i'm going to do to get this to stay where i want it to is put a baseline and i'm and i'm just on a one inch based so i'm going to baste all across the bottom of this all right before i even tackle this this scalloped edge so let's go along and it's going to baste every one inch and i pull a little bit manipulate as i go pull out those wrinkles if i can and what i don't get out here i will work on with steam and starch so i'm just going ahead of myself pulling a little bit all right i'm going to keep doing that all across the quilt so you can see what that looks like it's just got a one inch like i said a one inch base and then i will come back in a minute and we will deal with this little scallop before i stitched to stitch this down those scallops i'm going to take this little steamer again and set it up to steam and as soon as it's ready i'm going to go along and just give these a little bit of a little press so it will flatten it out just a little bit so it makes it easier for me to go along and stitch this edge okay there it is ready i'm just going to steam press it down a little bit there's a lot of fading in this quilt so the coloration is definitely different in each piece like i said i'm not pressing i'm just getting it to a little bit more tame don't worry too much about the wrinkles because those will steam and starch out once i get some starch on it but i'm going to first put that baseline to the edge okay so you get the idea of how that works all right i'm going to stitch i'll come back and stitch this melon down i will be right back here we are for the final row so i've got my baste in six uh six stitches per inch and i'm going to free motion do a little zigzag along this edge not worrying a lit too much about my wrinkles i'm just going to get it as flat as i can pulling manipulating as i go my fingers ahead of myself sometimes i stop and just reposition something i do quite often let me get this in the needle down i'd prefer this needle down is pull pull my my fabric let's go over here just keep pulling it down pulling it down this way like i said i am ahead of the needle stop for a minute reposition now if it's getting a little bit too uh if i've got too much excess right here i some i i do this spread across the throat of my of my long arm right here and that pulls the fabric that way it's a lot of moving parts at least with your hand and the fabric so it won't matter if this is wrinkly because i'm going to take the starch and steam right back there and straighten it out again just going to pull it down it takes a little bit of time but it works out great and in the end you get a pretty flat vintage quilt all right so you get the idea you're just going to go along here and just pull it down best you can before i do the final stitch on this last row i will come in and probably take those base stitches out first because i could do it when i'm finished but it would be a lot harder so i'll be back when i've got the whole thing stitched out and we will look at it then okay it's finished ta-dah i can't flip my phone while it's video recording so i'm just going to turn my phone let you see it and then i'll talk about a few things and summarize and i'm very happy with how it turned out so look at that isn't that the prettiest quilt look how flat it is these colors the pieces i'm going to go through and see if i can figure out how many pieces were used because there's a lot i mean i'm going to tell you there's probably a few thousand so what do i use for the backing i use anything anything i have on this one i used just a wide back and see if i can get you in close and see what this is this just a swirl off-white cream good neutral i don't mind using sheets um a piece of back whatever's handy whatever is fast because really i just want to get to the quilting i'm not too worried about the backing it doesn't need to be air specific when i'm doing these vintage quilts um you know finished is better than perfect and i want these usable i want them to be enjoyed so backing i don't worry too much about it people ask me a lot if i put muslin underneath a top and the only reason i would do that is if it's a thin top or there's a lot of gaps or the the piecing was uh was pretty far apart you know so that so that so that they're you know if there's gaps in the sewing i might do that but honestly most of these tops from the 30s and 40s are pretty sturdy and so if i don't have to put that muslin underneath i won't because it's a lot to to take care of when you're having to move around a top and a muslin and the batting so lots to deal with so mostly uh these quilts are sturdy so they don't need muslin um ballpoint needles i use schmetz ballpoint needles for all my quilting they they spread fibers they don't cut them so like i showed you in one of the videos uh video segments if you have holes they will go away with sometimes just you know each spritz of water or take fingernail over them on a long arm it also alleviates shredding and breaking thread when you go from right to left so that's really a big reason to use them also they only need to be changed two or three times a year i know they do not burr like a sharp i change mine two times a year whether they need it or not and i know that sounds crazy with a sharp i would normally change after every quilt but with the ball points they seem to last forever the design on this one is called lacy paisley by anne bright and it's called a point to point i believe which means it stays within your boundaries but it works great for edge to edge the other thing i want to talk just a minute about is long arm or machine quilting on a vintage top versus hand quilting do whatever you like and whatever your gift is there is no rule vintage tops that have been handpieced do not need to be hand quilted there's no there's no rule do what you like do what your gift is mine is long arm quilting like i said i'd rather it be finished if i was hand quilting it would be forever and i have way too many quilt tops to hand quilt i can hand quilt i have many times before but now that i have a long arm i'm all about getting them finished so that's my goal these days i use a handy quilter forte and i have a pro stitch or computer on it so on edge to edge designs i do use a digitized digitized design something to note somebody had asked me what was i going to custom quilt this when you have a quilt that's this busy let's turn it around again when you have a quilt that's this busy and has this many parts and pieces and colors and patterns you will lose a lot of this in custom quilting so something like this it doesn't pay to custom quilt it because if you were taking this to a long armor it would cost a lot probably if you brought this to me at a time when i was a hired long arm quilter if i custom quilted this it would be 800 to a thousand dollars for a quilt that's not fancy it's utilitarian it's beautiful but it was meant to be used so i don't see it as a custom quilt uh custom quilt what's the word i'm trying to say i don't i just don't see it to be custom quilted so edge to edge works great on most things anything that has a solid doesn't have so many prints that's a great candidate candidate that's a word i want a candidate for custom quilting um i would you know shout out to the piecer the piecer is the one who did the magnificent work here this was all handpieced and i just came in and finished it for her you know why didn't these quilts get finished there are so many reasons you know i think about that all the time because i have so many vintage tops maybe the person passed away maybe they were not a quilter they were just the piecer how many of you have pieced tops that are not quilted i'm going to guess a quite a few of you i have a good friend who's a long armor and she at any given time has about 60 of her own quilts to quilt but she works you know she hires out her long her custom quilting so she doesn't get to her own very often um cost might have been a cost issue if if you sent your your quilt out to be hand quilted maybe there was a cost reason why you didn't get them quilted there are so many reasons um why why things didn't get quilted but they didn't and there's a lot of them out there so my goal in life is to quilt as many as i can in my lifetime and maybe some of you will now too let's see you saw probably the red snappers i use red snappers if you need that link please ask those are by renee hadiden and just google red snapper quilts and you'll find them i don't pin my quilts i just snap them on and off they're pretty handy i used glide thread on the top i used 60 weight glide because i didn't want it to show too much i just wanted texture so i didn't want to see a color and i believe i used warm gray was the glide color in the bobbin i always balance so i used glide actually i use glide 40 weight it really doesn't matter i could use 60 weight but i already had 40 in the bobbin and i used a cream and it was so close to the gray normally i use the same color and the same weight in both but i do balance my threads so i use glide in both i love glide because it doesn't lint and i just like the way it looks there's no rule either about using cotton thread on cotton tops you can use whatever you want there are no rules i know people like to make rules but there aren't any um let's see lastly uh i used hobbs batting i used hobbs 80 20 heirloom i think i said in the video i like it because there's no right or wrong side you know a lot of a lot of bats have a right or wrong side so hobbs does not i'm in a hurry so i just always want to get my batting my batting on and get the quilt going so somebody will also ask probably how many how how long did it take you to quilt that and i would say from beginning to end probably six or seven hours and that would be because i had to manipulate the whole thing you know a lot of times i can walk away you know walk nearby from a quilt when i'm running an edge edge but with this one and with a lot of vintage quilts i need to be there to move around the fabric so wrinkles don't happen please don't happen so i watched this one really carefully and like i said it's uh about 70 by 90. so it's a good size uh it's got a scallop binding or scalloped edge so i'm going to go ahead and put a scallop binding on it or i'll knife edge that i'm not quite sure how i'm going to finish that yet but uh anyway i hope the video helped today and i hope you will give yourself a get yourself a vintage top and try it it does take a little bit more time but it is so worth it in the end okay all right thanks for joining me everybody see you later bye [Music] you

Channel: Kelly Cline Quilting

Views: 3,650

Rating: 4.9220781 out of 5

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Id: hRjZxo2fWE0

Length: 36min 1sec (2161 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021