Quilting Conundrum Solved - How to Fix Wonky Quilt Tops - Watch and Learn

welcome to another watch and learn i'm johnny barfis i'm kim sandberg we are educators here at handy quilter in the handy quilter studios today we're talking wonky quilts right quilts that won't lay flat now these aren't designed wonky because that's a different thing right these are quilts that won't lay flat right and this is something we get a lot of questions about right as a matter of fact i have a letter you have a letter oh my gosh this is another one of our quilting conundrums that's right so this is a letter we an email we received it says dear handy culture studio educators i inherited some old quilt tops from my great grandmother i want to quilt them to finish them so they can be enjoyed but they are super all in caps super wonky aka borders are put on incorrectly etc can you help me sincerely willa wonky quilter so we're gonna answer this question we are yes and the reason we're answering this we get this a lot right we get this question a lot i have wavy borders yeah what do i do i see this trouble shoot this quilt i see this ask online as well we see it on facebook and stuff so all right where do we get started well first of all let's take a look at a quilt top that we have hanging here johnny and i feel like this is pretty uh that's a good example it's a very good example of the type of things that tend to come out of grandmother's attic a wonky quilt this one came from brenda who purchased off ebay i'm sure i'm sure and if you look there's like lots of fullness here in this middle probably from being folded yeah and there's not even like an eight-pointed starter there's just a nice little just the way that it has stretched a little yeah um there's also super wavy borders over here at the edge can you see she had to pull them about up a little bit so they would you can see how look at this these these borders they wave all by themselves all you have to do is give them a little bit of flutter action a lot of wave there a lot of wave look at all that wave i mean i can i can put my hands on that and try as hard as i can but it is not laying flat like it's super stretched out yeah so and if we we step back and kind of look at this whole thing it is not symmetrical in any way shape or form right which is totally fine i love quilts like that i actually think this is quite a fun quirky quilt it's super fun and super quick super fun super quirky but it's gonna definitely give us some challenges when we get it to the frame so where do we start okay so the first thing you always want to do before you load a quilt top like this is take a minute to measure it okay so let me show you how i do it so that i can figure out um where things need to be and and i want to emphasize this is the way that i do it it doesn't mean it's the right way or the only way but i have found success this is the gospel according to kim yes exactly so the views expressed on this program do not represent handy quilter its owners remember they said on the radio all the time okay yes i remember so we're going to measure this quilt top across the top from the top edge to the top edge over there and we're going to measure again in the middle okay and we're going to measure again at the bottom and we're going to take those three measurements and whichever one is the smallest measurement that's what size we want to try to keep the quilt the smallest the smallest because you don't want to stretch do along here so how how long are we here johnny this is 60.5 60.5 okay that's her first measurement 60.5 that's my top and then let's do the middle so about right there right there that looks good oh we're about 60 and a quarter wow i'm not pulling two no that's fine so 60.25 okay okay that's the middle and then the bottom let's measure down here at the bottom i'm gonna disappear from the camera for a minute but oh oh so what is it at oh bottom um this is 62. okay 62. so we've got definitely some extra fullness at the bottom 62. okay so when we load this quilt the important thing is to figure out what that width is going to be and keep it the same consistently all the way down okay so johnny anytime we load a quilt what's the first thing we do we load our backing we load the quilt top on there we put our batting down and then what's the first thing we do we do a plumb line exactly plumb line exactly so we will do that plumb line across the top and then we find the center of the quilt okay and how do we find the center of a quilt you just fold it you just fold it so easy mark it with a pin super easy super easy to do so we'll we can kind of lay this down up here and we'll kind of show you so we'll figure out where that center is and then johnny's got some pins right oh i brought pins over the reason yep and we'll mark where that center is okay and then what we'll do is we'll we'll line it up with the center of the the quilt backing and the plumb line out there and then we will measure out on each side the same amount so my smallest measurement was actually six sixty point two five right so we'll divide that in half which this is dangerous again thirty and less than fourteen and eight yeah thirty ninth yep guys i was a carpenter at one time i did word rookie that's wrong caleb will put a big thing on the screen right here correcting me i'm sure oh hey it's 30.1 oh my gosh kayla thank you kayla kayla for the math one now can you convert that into a fraction though i think it's an eighth because half of half of a quarter is an eight right it's fine yeah here we go so okay so what we'll do is we'll put that on there and we'll make sure that we use our long arm centering tape which is right here and it has the middle marked with zero and we can put that right up here along the idle bar we can't quite see that because of the angle but i know but that's okay it's okay if we just rotate this really quick sure or is that too much is that like too crazy i'm just gonna show here so we're gonna pull this out we've got our centering tape here okay and right here is my zero mark so you can see that it says zero and then it goes one two three four all the way out on both sides so i will put this on my idle pole right up here um just this pole right here you can put it on with tape and then i will line up the center of the quilt you guys can see here that i've got my little pin right here i'll make sure that that's lined up with the zero zero point yeah yep and then i will measure out on each side and i will find that thirty thirty and an eighth which is out here and i will make sure and keep my sides there the whole time we'll make sure and keep that where it should be as we work our way down right yeah one second really you and christina talked about this in another episode right i know that so um this is something that we sell here handy quilter it's on the handy cooler website right and you can just attach it to that back eye little bar one thing christina does is she'll mark with a sharpie no not a sharpie not a sharpie uh a dry erase sorry that's the only thing that came to mind some kind of a marker that she can just easily wipe that away because it'll just so she'll mark on either side how wide she wants to keep that quilt that way as she's rolling as she's adjusting she always has that mark right exactly exactly okay so we keep it exactly that size so the important thing to do to keep your quilt exactly the same width all the way down is to always do what every time you advance johnny always do baste based trick question you guys oh man you know yeah so base the sides base the sides space the sides and then um one thing i didn't actually show when we were measuring this so we measured the top the middle and the bottom you want to do the same thing across the sides you do one side the middle and the other side and you can actually find out if there's a little bit of extra length through the middle of it and if there is what you can actually do is use for example on this quilt we've got these nice rows going across here i can actually use those rows to make sure these rows of piecing every time i advance at the bottom of my throat space i can just move my put my channel locks on move my machine across and make sure that that line is staying where it should be straight across so that i'm not ending up with a quilt that when it gets to the bottom the either the center is going to be lower or the corners will go down yeah i've seen some really spooky when i worked at the quilt shop we had someone bring a quilt in and she had a twin size quilt that she decided to adapt as a wedding gift for her grandson of course into a queen size quilt yeah which is totally doable it's totally doable at some point we i think we should point out the best way to add borders let's talk about that really quickly yeah so when you add a border you want to make sure you measure the quilt that you're adding the border to cut the border that size pin on each end pin in the center pin in the centers of those two centers so don't just put a i we i used to do this don't just cut a four inch piece of fabric and make some into strips and then just start sewing because you're gonna stretch the quilt yeah so we had one at the quilt shop and it got to the bottom and it looked seriously like a rainbow it was just this like yeah it was a big we'll say a rainbow a rainbow that's a happier thought it's a happier thought it was a frowny face you guys it was it was a sad quilt but anyway so so yeah so you can use so you can use these lines these um kind of check points to make sure that you're keeping everything nice and straight so every time to keep things nice and square every time we advance we want to always baste our sides we're keeping them lined up with that mark that we have put here with our centering tape making sure and staying right there at that 30 and an eighth we would be keeping it nice and straight along there and then we have to deal with maybe a little extra fullness on the inside okay so what do we do then what do we do then what you had uh i have i have i have a couple of ideas down here on our little our little letter um so to ease in that extra fullness there's a few ways we can do this um one really great tip that i've seen and this is actually in our handy tips it's from jamie wallin okay you spray starch so what you do is you get everything set up in the frame exactly the way that you want it to be you kind of work in all that fullness and then you completely douse it with a really heavy spray starch like this you just soak it and then let it dry and the spray starch will actually draw everything in a little bit it works doesn't it i haven't tried it i should have on the last quilt but i didn't you did it i actually used some of this on one quilt that i had a little extra wave in the borders this is especially good for borders yeah oh just pulled it in like this one probably a good candidate yeah actually this one probably would especially because this is a very very soft kind of a little bit of a looser weave fabric it's the oh my gosh this one feel that one i know it's like super oh my gosh wow that's it i'm sorry i think i think it's like feed sacks it's all super soft yeah this fabric um i would say i'm pretty sure it came from other probably clothing that was cut up or something yeah because that's like a flannel or yeah yeah it's been washed or something okay so that's the first way to use an extra fullness the next way is a really fun way of quilting so it is let's let's kind of show them here johnny so we call i like to call it soup cans because soup can quilting so let's get rid of this one here we're gonna so we're just gonna set this on here and kind of show you um with the oh and you know we actually need to scoot the machine down here so let's pull this one off real quick we'll just set it right here on the floor okay so we've got our quilt top we'll just show you here as if it's all nice and basted down and ready to go so let's talk really quickly about one method for when we're basting we didn't want to stitch this because we're not ready to quilt it yeah johnny's not quite ready to quilt this this lovely treasure that he has yeah so kayla if you could show zoom in there on the the machine oh we have the ruler base on let me take that off really quick oh that's a good idea yeah you don't want your ruler base on for this method because you need to be able to put a little extra pressure on the quilt right so as we are working our way across here oh wow so say we are right here yeah and i have fullness going oh yeah so move it over just if you move well you can actually see some fullness here on both sides of that why you show them how you do it well should we just base this one down really quickly we could baste it we could baste it it'll come off easily enough so we've got our we've got our center marks let's go ahead and move over to this side basting is basting is easy so first of all i'm going to set my machine on a basting mode and that's about as far as i can move over so i can't go quite to the corner here just because of some other stuff we have set on the frame we have another machine on it's okay you won't usually have that at home no no unless you are a teacher something who knows okay so i'm gonna go ahead and do my basting line now i actually have what is essentially a plumb line right here so i'm just to keep my quilt top right against that and let's go ahead and start oh you know what i can tell my basting stitch is at one inch i want it to be i want to do like a half inch let's see we can turn the gears off for you too okay just so it's easier for you yeah okay so what i'm going to do is put pressure you guys can see my hand here on both sides of the fabric to kind of ease in that extra form right so can you guys see how i'm doing that and i'm just going nice and slow there's no rush here if you want to you could absolutely put some pins in here a little bit of something to help you kind of get that little extra bit of fullness in there yeah that looks really good and i like i was showing my niece the other day kind of showing her how to quilt a little bit and i was showing her how you can add pressure to one side or the other so like say if i wanted to ease in this side more as i'm doing what you're doing you can kind of add more pressure on one side exactly and not both sides so and i'm doing i'm doing a little bit of the both side thing right because this this has got quite a bit of extra it's wonkity a little a little wonky that's our new word okay so there's my center pin i'm gonna pull that out i'll hand that to you john oh thanks i'll take care of the pants today so we'll just keep working our way across okay johnny i might need your both both of our hands in here to get this coming down over here yeah why don't you give me a little extra it's always nice when you got a friend to quote with right i wish i had a friend to quilt more often with i'll be honest we do some quilting in the studio but not nearly enough do we okay so we're getting this across here you guys can see that this this is a little bit of work but it's totally worth it because we're going to end up with a square flat quilt a little more pressure there oh there we go there we go okay okay oh i don't want to end up with a pleat okay unless you do we'll talk about that in a minute we'll talk about that in a second um the goal is not to have to put any pleats or tucks in your face right i mean that is the goal but sometimes there's enough fullness that it's like you essentially have to take it apart and do it again okay so we're over here to the side you guys can see that we've made it across we're ready to start coming down i think we actually did a pretty good job there getting that uh yeah getting that extra fullness worked in there this one is a little there's still a little wonkiness here but you know that's the that's the trick okay so you can see as we're moving down here we've still got a little bit of fullness through here so how do we work that in as we're quilting okay let's show them let's show them our super high-tech way there you go these are water bottles water bottles or i can do soup cans i was going to bring in my black beans but i totally forgot you lay one on each side i don't know if we can see that on that oh there we go yeah there we go okay so this is a little bit close but you can just lay on each side of the throat space and you can see how that's just easing it in and the nice thing is the quilt or the the bottle the quilt the bottle on the right side as you're kind of quilting across the quilt it will just move with you so you just have to kind of roll this one a little bit to keep some pressure so you can see that if i was quilting here it's just easing in i mean if i come up here next to where some of this real fullness is look at how putting that pressure on both sides of that it just flattens everything out right so a little that's great yeah i've actually put one down here too oh yeah on the bottom you can can't quite see that but you can put one down here if you need to you could do three so you could have another one sometimes i'll even put one out here and then on this back side i will just kind of use my hand a little bit to work in that extra fullness yeah nice so isn't that cool yes that is really great so simple tip yes so let's talk pleats or a scene yes if you need to if you need to so where kim was okay so i had one well i don't have the quilt i yeah i did three i'm making doing four quilt tops for the a person a friend of a friend who they found these old quilt tops and their mom's stuff as they were cleaning out after she passed away and she i don't think she was a quilter so they think they came from their grandma and they're maybe even their great grandma so this is one of them behind us here let's talk about this one really quick such a great question so it wasn't it didn't have it was pretty well done i'll say that it was pretty well made so i didn't have to do much like you know i didn't have to play with it too much no soup cans or anything it was really well done and then the one on the ground let's yeah oh this one here yeah yeah so this was another one that i did and it same thing it was it was pretty flat so we didn't have to do too much with it and i just did both of these i just did an overall an edge to edge with pro stitcher yep so it just gives it you know because like especially the prints on both of these you know this one has all the pink so it was going to show more but she didn't want to do like custom quilting yeah so i just did it all over edge and it fit like it's our company model we want to get finished finish more quilts right we want to get these filled quilts finished yeah for i'm having a hard time stumbling over my words on those so sorry well i think i think the important thing here is is talking about ways to finish this like the type of patterns to quilt these right an edge edge is always a great idea for quilts like this it doesn't mean that you can't do full on super custom i mean we've we've shown quite a few quilts here the vintage ones where there has been custom right like over the top um but this edge edge like this is actually a really good choice on a quilt that's a little wavy or um not not pieced so flat because it's easy to ease in that extra focus using an edge to edge yeah so yeah i think that these are these are great ones now no i was gonna say no over stitching too right choose a pattern yeah so if you're doing if you're doing procedure make sure you choose a pattern that doesn't have any over stitching or a pantograph if you're quilting from the back yeah something that doesn't have a lot of over stitching meaning like you'll stitch around a circle and then you'll stitch partway around that circle again stuff like that when you're easing in extra fullness if you've got more stitching in certain areas than other it can kind of pull things a little bit right and well and if you're doing that soup can trick the first time it goes around it it'll do one spot right but then when it goes back around it might not be in the same spot so that's why you want to do no overstitching and use a thread that blends yes use it another good tip okay thank you for that so let's get this cool so i wanted to mention possibly doing a now this one wouldn't be a great candidate well i don't know maybe something like this let's talk about let's talk about this quilt because this this is another type of quilt that comes out that's a little wonky that sometimes we have to deal with um number one and it's got some holes in it i don't know if you guys can see i'm actually so um there's there's a little bit of repair that needs to be yeah you'd want to repair that first yes but if you had if you had some fullness in this border for say so they already have a seam right there you could just make an extra pleat or a dart you know or just make that seam wider essentially take that seam and starting here go out a little or even unpick it a little bit take a little bit out of the of that fullness out and then re-stitch it on right you can absolutely with borders especially it's pretty easy to go in and make some adjustments yeah those kind of things the one that i did had three had three borders on it oh my god and they're all solid and they were newer it was funny because they were newer fabrics you could tell they were brighter and they were newer fabrics they'd added on so i actually just did a kind of a pleat like that on the machine and on the long arm so i got down to that spot it would i couldn't quite like ease it in with my soup cans even and so i ended up i'm picking which no one wants to do that but i just did like a little pleat on that on that um border and then i brought it in here and i sewed it with on a machine just on my domestic machine i just stitched it down right along that seam and you can't even tell and that was and so you did the stitching with your machine after yeah so i quilled it first pulled off but you couldn't even see it like you might my knees came over and we couldn't even find it so yeah especially i i can see that especially on a solid border because it just it just turns it is blended so fix holes fix borders exporters press it really well that's another thing that's really important um sometimes if you've got a little waviness if you just are very careful and you press it and that means you put the iron on it and hold it in place you don't iron iron means you're moving back and forth which can actually stretch the fabric out right exactly which makes the problem worse i'm kind of an iron or person i know i have to make myself so press it with see steam you can use some more of the starch you can do all those things to kind of help pull in that extra fullness yeah so that's a good one um i think let's see i'm looking through all my stuff here okay now johnny what if i get to the bottom of my quilt and i do have that big foundation exactly oh man i don't know what would you do what do you do well i um one of the ways to just prevent that as you're going through and stitching is instead of when you're basting down your sides always starting at the top of your frame and stitching towards you you actually line everything up nice and straight and then you stitch from the bottom up and you can actually put your hand like here here show them how to do that just pull that machine don't stitch though but i mean it's got a lot of junk over there is so if i know that this seam right here is where i want the bottom that i want to keep things straight with what i can do is i can line that up there and i can stitch and i can just set my hand right here and my hand is still putting a little pressure on that and i can actually walk my fingers up and keep them kind of close there and you can see that i'm actually kind of pulling on that quilt just to ease in that little bit of extra fullness and this way i'm easing the fullness up in the quilt and sitting down instead of pulling it all down every time so i'm less likely to end up with that sad face at the bottom however the sad face at the bottom um another way to deal with it is when you get to the bottom you get down to the bottom and you realize your corners are dipping down a little bit you can actually essentially do a plumb line across the bottom in the batting that you can line everything up with line up that bottom go ahead and do the stitching along basting along the edge of it and then work that fullness in yeah and i think that's why especially here we recommend that you don't float that quilt right you'd want to have that attached to your border yeah because i had yeah i had a friend who just started long army and he sent me a sent me a picture and he had a lot of fullness at the bottom and i said oh did you pin on the did you have a pin no no no so this is when you would not want to float we call it the f word here and i know some of you think of other words like flotation device or fruit um but we're talking about floating floating quilt tops yeah um floating quilt tops and if it works for you awesome go for it but um especially when you're working with a quilt where you do need to work in a little bit of that extra fullness having that full having the control of having it attached to the leader to be able to keep everything nice and flat right it's priceless it is be sure and do that yep well i think that's about it right do you think do you think willa got her answers for i think willa will be super excited okay i hope so i hope so definitely well i think that's it right i think that's it we talked about the quilt on the wall yes we did vintage yes johnny's vintage okay thank you so much for watching we really appreciate it if you haven't already be sure to like and subscribe to our youtube channel and as always have fun quilting this week

Channel: Handi Quilter

Views: 16,618

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Id: 76GYiRxia64

Length: 27min 29sec (1649 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021