Quilting TNT - Threads, Needles & Tension Tips & Tricks! - HQ Live

welcome to our hq live i'm so excited we have chris souza here today with us he's one of our handy quilter educators and chris first of all maybe you could just tell us what got you involved in quilting you know it's it's a little different um being a male quilter they they tell us that there's a lot of male quilters but you know there aren't that many um per se so my wife i wanted to make her a gift so i learned how to quilt by making my first quilt which was a king-sized kaleidoscope pinwheel the interesting thing about being a male quilter most of them have their wives or significant others that are quilters and my wife doesn't sew so you didn't pick a real easy quilt to start with chris no one no one told you that that might be hard i guess so uh you know i guess that's the simplicity of it that i just don't do anything small good for you so what we're going to go over today and um we're just really really lucky to have chris with us and he does such a fabulous job explaining things and we're going to talk about um thread needles and tension and just building confidence in in establishing a good tension for yourselves at home so and also like choosing the right needle and the right thread and we're going to talk a little bit about some of chris's favorite threads and that's where we're going to go from there fantastic so really quickly i want to tell them about the quilts behind us on the wall these were just sampler quilts made by the educators at handy quilter back in 2012 and we chose these to hang behind us today because there's a lot of fantastic use of threads whether they were doing micro quilting or changing thread colors because of the the fabric choices but we chose those specifically because of the the thread that was used in these quilts behind us so they're a fantastic example so let's start off chris by having you talk about how do you decide what thread to use on your quilt you know the importance to the thread in the quilt is when when i'm putting a design on a quilt it is my opinion that the thread should complement the quilt it shouldn't be the first thing you see when you look at a quilt it should be the design of the quilt and the piecing so your choice of threads can can make a real difference in how the quilt is perceived along with your designs so what i do is i try to look for an element in the quilt for a color so on this quilt for example we've got some purples we've got some very busy fabrics that have some purple in it so i look at it and the the color that was used on this was a yellow to to tie in the golds and the yellows and you can see how it shows on on all of the darker colors right so for me i preferred for myself i would use a purple now some people would say white thread choice so the reason i choose purple is because if you look as it goes over the lights and the darks it doesn't get really big change of value so on the light colors it doesn't get too dark on the dark colors it doesn't get too light and it ties in the rest of the purples into the quilt so that i kind of think out of the box i've got about six colors that i kind of focus on as blenders and a purple in this shade is one of those colors so i've always gone with this theory too chris but i have never used purple as a blender so thank you for adding that to my quilting i love that it is one of my primary colors that i i have a general go to it's just amazing how the orange soaks in the purple it doesn't i mean it just doesn't stand out as it shouldn't be there same with purple the bright orange it just the purple just kind of blends everywhere i enjoy it i love that choice the other thing is sometimes with a busy fabric some people try to choose like a variegated thread my own personal choice is it doesn't really add to the quilt you lose the variegated thread and it is usually a more expensive thread to have a variegation yes you're right it is so you lose the variegation if i had a large negative area i would probably use the variegation to cover that right let's go back really quickly i i would like to talk more about variegated but i'd love for you to show me like some more of what your blender colors are what what show me more about blending threads because we run into this problem a lot or you'll have like a navy blue and a white quilt or or also this thing something like that that's fantastic the the thing i also caution against is using the cone to look at your color because that good saturation may not you won't see how it's going to blend without debuting the threads right so i pull them out so i don't know if we if we pointed that out very much but when chris was auditioning the thread he pulled it out and laid a strand of thread across all the colors in the quilt so that you can see what it does so so another one is a good point for blenders is almost like an off green like a celery green this is similar to the colors that i use now as i debut that over okay truthfully if i picked this thread up off the shelf i would not be able to think of a quilt i could use it in but looking at what you've done with it on the quilt i'm like another one i need to add to my quilting room and as we look at this you can see the changes of color actually it doesn't look really green i mean it's beside the gold thread here on the black it looks almost gold whereas on other colors it will change back to its green it doesn't have to be the exact shade of green that's in your quilt for it to blend i choose this one also because it doesn't change value my blender threads that i choose are because they don't change value okay from light to dark meaning it doesn't get too light on the dark it doesn't get too dark on the light so therefore it blends with the whole quilt that's a perfect explanation i love that okay show me some of your other favorite colors so other than that i have a gold that i like to use similar to this this is and i would use this same type of gold what this does is it it will tie certain things in but on this particular quilt it's not my go-to on this because it is a little bright and it gets a little lost in your yellows and oranges okay when that happens you you lose continuity if your eyes don't have any place to go they get lost so can you think of maybe are we talking like the traditional the the the navy the mauve is that the type of colors you would put this on what you know i actually use that a lot of my christmas quilts wow holiday quilts that that have especially christmas or okay you know the the christmas season quilts the gold works really well it it ties in a lot of the metallic uh designs that you see the the inks that they're using on a lot of those when you use a trilobal poly like this it almost looks like a metallic doesn't it it shines because of the way that the thread is designed and made in in three pyramids okay well tell me that again the three pyramids tell me are you talking about the tri-lobo poly trilobal polyester the the importance in how your thread looks and that comes in thread selection are you looking for something that's very bright are you looking for something that's going to shine triloba polyester is basically made three strands that are basically like a pyramid right what happens is the light goes in and like a prism it shines out really bright doesn't get lost like a normal round thread would so if you want to use something bright you can use a tri-level polyester i like that explanation good one of the other colors that i really like is a silver so this is so fine from superior this is 408 so obviously it's not something that i would use on this quilt but if you look next to the purple it almost turns purple and blue yes it does so it does change it's just a little too bright for this quilt and there's really not a lot of silver in here but i use that on a lot of my halloween quilts i've done a lot of spider-man quilts because i have a grandson that loves spider-man so i use that in spider webs and things that i'd want silver i also use this in my holiday quilts you mention the blues and things like that that's where this comes in i will use my silver on the blues and i use it even on like black and white because if i quilted with black thread on the white it's really unforgiving it just the black thread really stands out if i quilt white it stands out on the the black so if i use something medium like gray that's that's where i choose to use it is because like you say it blends it blends evenly on both of those colors it does and i will tell you even though purple was not your your go-to i did a recent black and white background quilt that i did with the purple purple is my favorite color so it came out beautiful i'm going to try that so one of the other colors is a a taupish kind of yes and i i will use this a lot of times because it will blend in therefore why i use blender threads yeah so you know other than my standard white this is another color that i use a lot of okay i'm with you i use that color a lot on probably those traditional colored fabrics i was talking about so the key is to make sure that you're debuting your threads on the quilt you know if i have a quilt top that comes in this is how i'm going to do it i'm going to lay the quilt top down and i've had customers and people that have said i don't like green but i've laid out the green thread out of all the threads they picked that one because it blends the best it's not a matter of what somebody thinks may be the best you try to find exactly what would work that's what's pleasing to the eye it really helps a lot to be able to audition your thread or you called it debuting your thread laying it across the fabric like that so awesome are those your most used do you ever use yellow as a blender you know i do have a yellow i wouldn't necessarily call it a blender but i use it with a quilt that may have a little bit of yellow or whites and yellows i will use so fine has one 419 uh so it's a it's a softer almost lemony kind of chiffon and this kind of fades right in it works really well now the nice thing is you can get threads for your long arm that are in spools you don't always have to have cones so if you're using a small amount of thread or only need a small amount you can work with them on your long arm some people don't realize that but you do not want to have them setting this way so thread delivery is a big factor but you can do that using your horizontal spool pin okay so when you set up your horizontal spool pin your spool would go on like this and it would continue there you go okay and that would allow the thread to come off as it was wound on because there's two different ways that threads are wound they're either wound onto the spool in a stack wind or they're crosswound right when you look at how your cones are wound you can see that they're crosswound these are made to come off coming off the top those are made to come off the side you're right okay i want to point out really quickly on the horizontal spool pin the appropriate way that it should be on your post so if you have this correctly on your post this thumb screw should be behind the post so that it's not impeding the movement of the spool because that will change your time yeah so when you put move it around so you can see it on all sides the thumb screw should be behind the straight the vertical or what's the post the vertical post so that it just doesn't get in the way of that spinning with a slight angle going up so this spool doesn't come off yeah we don't want to tilt it down or you'll lose that spool so we'll just tilt it up just a tiny bit so just wanted to make sure you knew how that went down there okay so i like that explanation for the horizontal spool pin and i find it important because there's a lot of specialty threads like your glitter threads and your metallics that you're not going to necessarily buy in a very large cone right so it is that is one of those this tools that i automatically when people are asking me what i need for my long arm right off the bat the first thing i'm saying is okay you need a glide foot you need to have your your horizontal spool pin okay and if you're going to do rulers your sure foot so as long as you have a high quality thread the spools are fantastic just make sure that you understand that thread delivery system can be a factor so and you know that being said i i like how you said that the high quality threads you know what people have to understand is that even if you bought the most expensive thread on the market it's still the cheapest thing you're going to put in the quilt right so why not use a top quality thread it's going to give you better delivery and a better quality product and you've spent many hours putting this quilt together or somebody has yes you've spent quite a bit of money putting this quilt together why put it together with a poor quality thread that's going to take away from it exactly that's that's a good point all right let's talk about well we briefly talked about variegated i'd like to talk about it just a little bit more i kind of interrupted you i apologize for that but varicade's a it's a favorite for people people love variegated thread and they love it because it's so beautiful it's just got so many different colors but what kind of a quilt like where should i you said purple should i put purple variegated on this quilt you know when i look at a quilt especially when i'm looking at variegated threads i'm looking for something with a lot of negative space where the variegated can show okay now it doesn't mean you have to have it in the bobbin and in the top i will use if i were using this particular thread i could use this as my bobbin thread because it is one of the colors within the variegation that way you're not using your variegated threads which can be more expensive in both your your bottom and top thread well in the chance of matching up the color in the variegation your your chances of ever getting that to happen properly really not very good yeah but on a quilt like this even if if we had a gold and orange variegated thread you're going to lose the effects of the variegation so i try to make sure that i've got a lot of negative space or something that my design is going to highlight that thread because the biggest disappointment some people have is they'll have something like this particular fabric they'll pick something that has all these colors in it yeah they use a bunch of variegated thread and then they look at it and go i can't see the thread it's so difficult don't want to lose it when you don't want to lose your thread yeah well and i like what you said um in the beginning that your quilting is just really to to finish the quilt and enhance the piecing if at all possible not to take the show so when i choose a variegated thread i want it to be in a place where it can be a part of the show so i have to be careful about where i'm putting it because i really want those colors those beautiful combined colors to be able to stand out somewhere so and for me i'm always trying to find design elements that are going to enhance that but you also have to make sure that you're taking into account does this really benefit the quilt or am i just trying to you know have some fun with the thread good point sometimes i forget you can do a whole cloth quilt on a on a blank piece of fabric and have a blast with a lot of the variegated threads that'd be a good place to do it it would be yeah all right let's talk about specialty threads do you have some specialty threads that you love to use or like to add occasionally to those special places there are times that i really i will use a metallic okay because there's times metallic threads can can really jump out so if you put a metallic down you could see how it just shines if i've got elements that i want to see i can shine these with that it would show up pretty much everywhere yes it would i wouldn't want to use it for my to edge design on the whole quilt but i would want to highlight things with the metallic thread okay you also just want to make sure that you're using the proper needle and on a metallic thread i generally wouldn't put metallic in the bobbin i would generally use a base thread of maybe a beige or or maybe something that's a little neutral so it's not going to show okay we'll talk about winding a bobbin and why this would be a little tricky winding a bobbin in just a minute but you bet yeah i i like i love having a place to kind of highlight some threads sometimes and metallic is one of my favorites now you also have the glitter threads which these can be a lot of fun but this is again something you're going to want your horizontal spool pin for yes and as you're looking at that these glitter threads i'd want to run a little slower okay uh a little less tension you know you've got to be careful on it because it is basically easy to stretch so you want to run less tension i also like to use a bigger stitch because then it leaves more of the more of the thread sitting on top of the fabric so i like bigger stitches when i'm going to use a specialty thread like that so i generally sit eight to ten stitches per inch when i'm working with some of my specialty threads when you try to put it too tight sometimes you have a tendency to to have a thread break or if you're trying to go too fast or too many changes awesome this is fun okay let's talk about needles because do you just put one needle in and leave it or how are we matching up the needle the thread you know what kind of thing the importance that i find with our needles are just as important as our threads they they have to be matched so we want to make sure we use the proper size for our needles we do have a chart that is set here where it sets our needle size okay against silk thread which is a hundred way thread or our micro quilter threads that are hundred weight uh polyester thread you know you can use it for a 60 weight your monofilament which would be like your monopoly the thinner cotton and mylar threads which would be similar to the glitter thread that we just showed we also have the 14 the 16 the 18 and the 20. and next to each one of those tells you what threads it works well with so where do i find this guide this guide is included with your machine okay it is on our website okay it is also on the newer generation machines it's actually part of a screen that you can go in and find it isn't that amazing it is the little information screen and that information when you are doing it on the amara and the forte and and the infinity it also gives you if you have trouble wondering thread path and things like that it gives you your complete threading guide from there also that's fantastic so it does work out well yeah but with your needles you also want to make sure you're using the proper needles okay so when you look on the needles you can see your size which is up in the top right right hand corner so so the one i'm holding right now says 110 18. so so the number we usually use is 18 but you'll you'll occasionally hear people using the 110 or the 100 and that is because there are two different worlds of needle sizing it's just important if you're working with an 18 they're always going to be just like that yeah it's we use the grossbacker needles uh they are made wonderfully they're high quality needle and if you look at that it's also a 134 series needle one more thing to see on there is make sure that you're getting the system 134 correct because if you're not not all needles are equal and not all needles will work so some are longer some are shorter it has to do with the makeup of the needle and the particular unit that you're putting it on for all of our machines that's what we use and you know i i generally for two needles that i i keep a pretty good number of i keep 16s and 18s because those primarily cover the thread sizes i use so a question that we are often asked is so if i'm going to quilt on like a denim quilt what kind of needle do i use because on our domestic machines right we have needles for denim we have needles for stretch we have needles for sharp so the question is if i'm quilting a denim quilt what size needle do i use what's your answer chris well the size of the needle isn't for me is not on the item that i'm quilting i mean denim is basically cotton but i'm going towards my thread size so what thread size am i using okay so that's what we focus on with the long arm is what kind of thread are we using rather than what type of fabric is that's not our first question our first question is what type of thread right what size thread am i using and then i can go to my needle size to correspond with that thread size you know whether i'm using a 40 weight or a 50 weight or a 60 weight of course hopefully everybody understands as you go up in thread weight size you're going thinner thread it's the opposite with needles as you're going up in sizes of needles you're going bigger they wanted to keep us on our toes so remember that the higher the number for the thread weight the finer the thread correct so the higher number of needle it actually is a bigger hole so you to get a finer needle you need a smaller number so they and you know they're there's conflicting we have ballpoint needles now and there are conflicting ideas on whether the ballpoint needles i would use a ballpoint on denim because it would be the same thing that the denim needles on my standard machine okay so i would i would still use for whatever size thread but i would use the ball point yeah i like the ball point when i'm stitching uh t-shirts or um i still go back to the knit thing so if i'm if i'm stitching on soft cuddle or i use it also for my batiks because batiks being a tighter weave fabric yes it doesn't slice through any of the fibers okay i've i've heard i've heard people say they have better luck with those on the batik and sometimes if you notice that if you're skipping a stitch or two once in a while yeah go up in a size needle so we're not telling you what you're doing is wrong but if you're struggling with any of these types of things you can try something like that there's always a way to you know try to remedy the situation right so good good good okay so i think we covered needles pretty well let's talk about tension setting our tension and let's start with the bobbin because that's okay that's where we start with our machines is the bobbin is our foundation of the tension so so when when you're setting your tension on your bobbin you should always set it the same all the time okay because your bob intention should be the same the only tension you should ever have to adjust is your top tension once your bobbin is set right okay so a lot of people will do the drop test and and see if it lifts up in their hands i'm a drop tester and and that works fine uh for me i personally use a towel gauge uh the reason i use tow gauge is because using that gauge gives me a set point to look at but that comes from being kind of scientific in in the way that i look at things it's good and then there's more than one way to do things and so we wanted chris to talk about the toa gauge and show us how that works for you because i'm a drop tester but i'd like to so the reason i use a towa gauge which is this this is a tm-3 which is the size four m-class bobbins which is what we use in our long arm okay the reason i use it is because when the bobbin goes into it you're engaging your backlash spring okay so therefore by engaging your backlash spring it is actually the true tension of what it's going to be in the machine so it just goes under that wheel over that wheel and you give it a pull now not slow trying to make the number but you give it a good pull and as we do that we're noticing it's at 170. so that needle as it rises as i pull this it's ending up around here okay is your number gonna be the same as mine you know tension is always an arbitrary number okay so it's what you like for me my machines run really well at 170. so i okay all my machines no matter whether it has been an avante or an amarra or a forte or a fusion or my infiniti i have set mine at 170. okay let me just get this straight though go ahead if i pull this similar similarly to the way you did it should be about 170 because that's showing me the tightness is that right exactly so i am getting you're getting exactly what the number 50 to 170 there you go so for me so so you're sitting that setting that according to how your machine where you get the best tension on your machine some people like their tensions to be tighter some people like them to be looser and that's that's the the really exciting thing about quilting is that there's no one way there's no right way wrong way there's many ways to get to our completed item whether it's a quilt whether it's a table runner for me i like mine to look a little bit more traditional i don't like a super tight tight stitch okay if i wanted it super tight i could set this tighter but then i'm setting my top tension tighter because it is tension is a is a tug of water yeah so for me i have found that i get the best quality and the best tension out of my machines at 170 and no matter what machine i've run i have set it for that okay and then i will adjust my top tension because once your bobbin tension is set and this is for all of my threads if i'm working this is a 50 weight so fine that's in this bobbin if i'm doing a 40 weight i still set my bobbin tension at 170. okay so no matter what i'm working with i set my tension at the exact same because the only tension i want to have to adjust is my top tension i like that theory it's so much easier to just have to make adjustments on that upper tension knob than to have to pull out your bobbin and keep changing it so that's that's pretty much the rule of thumb on a long arm machine is set your bobbin tension at your ideal setting put it in the machine and then stop thinking about the bobbin and now we'll focus on the upper tension correct so if you look at your tension if your top thread's being pulled through to the bottom your top tension is too loose okay if your top tension is being pulled through or your bobbin tension your bobbin thread is being pulled through the top your top tension's too tight it's pulling that up when i do my quilts the kind of a trick that i i like to do because how many times has anybody quilted a pass and their top looks perfect but when they roll the quilt they see the tension on the back may not have been all that great that's happened to me so personally for me i did 400 quilts last year so i do quite a few and most of them are edge to edge what i try to do is when my stitch is being made i try to actually see the stitch being made a little bit from the top okay i don't want to see it straight lined i don't want to see it being pulled all the way but if i can at least see where that stitch is being made i know that my back is perfect and that's the first thing people are going to look at you want to see a nice well-formed stitch and and i like to think about the the job of the upper thread is to go down to the bottom you know because of the friction it leaves that loop the hook passes it and the job of the upper thread is to pull the bobbin tension up into place which the place is in the middle of the quilt so you got to think about what the top thread's job is what it needs to do to finish its job is it pulling too tight or is it not pulling enough to bring it up into the middle there so excellent so upper upper tension once you once you can think through the process of of setting your bobbin leaving it there not touching it it's pretty simple to just go to the top and make those adjustments while we're talking about it tell me how you you turn because when we're adjusting our bobbin how much turn do we give to that little skirt so i like to teach people in minutes okay so a very small adjustment on that screw on your bobbin case is going to make a huge difference so like a tick on a clock like that that's it just one minute at a time okay and and make small adjustments okay what about the upper now the upper because we don't have numbers on the dial sometimes it's a matter of a quarter of a turn okay half turn it depends on it depends on how your thread's coming through do you have any hints to help people figure out like a quarter turn because i know there is a little black dot on that knob but you can't really see it well generally what i do is i just hold my thumb in one spot or a finger and when that gets to one point turn it a quarter i know where it is i'm using my fingers or a reference point okay so you know it works really well when i do that so if i take it and i put my thumb here and i rotate that up it's a quarter of a turn yeah you'll have a lot more confidence in turning that knob if you're keeping track of how far you're turning it rather than just rounding randomly turning it because if you don't what you're going to end up with is a lot of random spins of that dial and then it becomes tension roulette yeah and it's why we try to teach people and like i try to teach my students if you use a gauge i can understand where you're at because all the gauges are the same so the tension is when you pull it if you're pulling it the same way i do or with a good pull doesn't have to be the exact same way i do but if you pull it with a good pull like you did you're getting the same number so if you're having a tension issue and you call me and you say i'm having a real problem with my tension and i say what's your tension at you can tell me oh it's good but if you tell me it's at 120. i could say well from the picture i see raise your attention to 180 yeah and see how it levels out talking about the toa guide right so yeah it's a really good tool to be able to use and for people to have a visual of that number if that's something that's beneficial to them i've always gone i'm really tactile and so i really like the drop method but for a lot of people the toa guide is a perfect tool to help them walk through that bobbin tension process so i i have had an instance where a person had told me their tension was perfect and when they brought me their bobbin because i couldn't figure out why the thread was being pulled through no matter what they did to the top tension and i put it on the toe gauge and it went over 400 yeah it's i like to have something that looks a little it's nice to have that gives me a number even though it's an arbitrary number yeah chris thank you so much for coming and doing this with us i love the way that you explain things he's very analytical and explains things well and and we're just we're just happy to have you a part of handy quilter you know and i love it i love quilting uh to to no end so i enjoy being with the students and the people and trying to help thanks for sharing your story about your first quilt that's pretty it's pretty inspiring so so thank you for joining us today thank you if you've liked our video please share it with people that this could benefit them for their attention and their their thread choice subscribe to our youtube channel so that you can follow these educational videos that we're doing and most of all just have some fun quilting [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Handi Quilter

Views: 11,369

Rating: 4.9185338 out of 5

Keywords: Handi Quilter, Longarm, Sewing, Quilting, Quilts, Free-motion Quilting, Finishing Quilts, quilter, longarm quilt, quilting tips

Id: A02FQpw-P-o

Length: 35min 53sec (2153 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020