Sometimes Less is More? | In Depth Long Arm Quilting

hi i'm donna jordan from jordan fabrics today we are going to be working on something called less-is-more we're not going to be doing any piecing or any patchwork at all most of the quilts that I make are pretty traditional I love patchwork I love geometric shapes I love all the prints but these don't work for everyone we always have people come in the shop and they need to make a gift quote for someone but that someone you're giving the to doesn't want something traditional looking maybe they don't even like patchwork but they love some of the fabrics we have so today I'm going to show you some different ways to use beautiful fabrics in a quilt but it's not a patchwork quilt here is our section of solid fabrics and prints that act like solids so these here this is a true solid it has no print on it at all it can make up into a really nice quilt if we put a nice quilting pattern on it we might even want to use a contrast color thread we also use a lot of fabrics like these this is the grunge from Mota it has a little bit of print but it will read in a solid so some have more some have left this one doesn't have a lot but you can see a little bit of something going on there this would make a really nice solid quilt we also have a lot of beautiful batise this one I mean it's almost a shame to cut it up because the pattern is so awesome in this this would again make a really nice coat looks like the ocean to me when my son went off to college he did not want a patchwork quilt but he wanted a quilt so we took a really nice batik and we quilted it for him this again this would be really nice now we don't have to limit ourselves to fabrics that are really plain this would make a really nice quilt too just on its own the colors are just beautiful here's another one we had a customer come in with their teenage young teenage granddaughter this is the fabric they wanted it's a little bit hard to make a quilt out of it but they just wanted this fabric quilted and you could put a really nice design on this for quilting let me show you what I'm talking about with the quilting I've got a pillow here this is an almost solid and it's got a very prominent quilting design on it because I used a contrast color thread so this is a nice swirly design but you could use a geometric design if you are giving this to someone who's interested in flowers of course you could put flowers on it you can pick almost any quilting design so we're going to go over to the workroom we're going to pick a couple of fabrics and I'm going to show you how to quilt up a nice coat with no patchwork here are the two fabrics I have picked out for my know patchwork quilt this is going to be one side of it and this is going to be the other side of it so the cool thing will show up nicely from both sides and I'll probably use a light aqua thread so the first step is to cut your yard adjustable and get it ironed even though it's not Patrick you still want to steam press it really really well this is going to be the back of the quilt but I still want to cut it nice and straight because it makes it really easy to pin onto the quilting machine so I've got my weight holding down the far end of my ruler and I'm just going to do a nice straight cut now I don't want a seam right down the middle of my quilt so I'm going to take this piece here and I'm going to split it into two pieces in stitch one on each side of the center that way your seams will be centered but not down the middle they'll be splitting the difference with the panel on each side I'm just splitting this right down the middle right on the fold there so now I've got two pieces and I'm going to stitch one on each side of this guy this is the top of the quilt I've cut both of these pieces to the exact finished length that I want now this is the center over here and this is going to be a piece on each side so I'm going to cut this down and then I'm going to split the fold and these are going to be exactly the length I want and this is going to be nice and rectangular the back can be a little bit extra long it doesn't have to be exact because it just needs to be bigger than the top once we get it all closed it will trim off the extra backing I'm sewing each of these half wicks on to the center and I'm going to use a big seam allowance I'm using about a 1 inch seam allowance and the reason the seam allowance is so big is because I don't want these any of these selvages to show on the finished product so I'm probably going to trim this off to about a half inch so when you're sewing this because it's a long straight seam I am I am holding this tight like this as I sell I don't normally do that when I'm doing patchwork but on these long scenes you don't want it occurring at all so I like to just hold it nice and tight and it makes that seam look really flat here's the side piece on the top of the quote again I've used a big seam allowance here and sometimes I will cut this seam allowance off it is actually nice to have a bigger seam allowance here because when you put it on the clothing machine it will stay nice and flat so I'm going to leave this on I'm not going to trim this one because it's not going to show through my fabric is thick enough that this printing won't show through and it's not pulling sometimes the selvages they pull a little bit they're not real flat but that's not the case here it's nice and flat so I am going to I'm just going to finger press this open I don't even need to iron it because if I under the fabrics already so I'm just going to slide my finger down here and it's going to stay nice and flat when I put it on to the quilting machine now I finger press the seam open with the back of my fingernail here we have customers who have to have really short fingernails for work or this just bothers their hand I have a really cute ladybug ironing tool here so this works the same way you just open this up a little bit maybe press to make sure it's open with your fingertip and then draw this right along the seam and it presses it nice and flat now if you don't have a cute ladybug you can also try the back of a spoon that works really well too so again get it so that you feel there's no overlaps we don't want it like this but if you get it pretty flat you can just take the back of the spoon I'm just doing the edge of the spoon right along there and it really presses it quite nicely and then I don't have to take this over to my ironing board I can just do it right here at the Machine and it is really flat I'm almost ready to load my quilt onto the long arm machine and here is a step I always do before I load it on I fold everything in quarters so the batting is folded in quarters the back and the top and then I make sure that the back and the batting are bigger than the top that way I won't get something onto the Machine and quilted all the way down and then discover that the batting is not big enough or the back is not big enough I'm going to load the back onto the machine so the first step is to find the center of this side and mark it with a pin and this purple line here on my canvas that's the center of my canvas so I'm going to match those up and I'm going to attach this with pins I use these big corsage pins and I'm going to take a big bite with the pin and I'm going to pin all along the top here goes really fast the top edge is all pinned on now I'm going to roll it up a little bit so I can get to the bottom edge so I can pin it up so I don't worry if there's little wrinkles I don't worry if the seams are not going exactly perfect I just want to get enough of it out of the way so I can get to the bottom of the quilt we will reroll it neater later so we won't have all those wrinkles in it now I've lined up the middle of the bottom with the middle of my canvas down here and I'm going to pin along these edges so you can pull it up like this and pin honestly if I'm not filming I just drop it to the ground and sit down there and pin but it's kind of hard for you to see what I'm doing I've got the top and the bottom all pinned on in the machine and now I want to get it really really flat so I'm going to use my take-up knobs here and I'm going to make I'm going to just take out the slack a little bit now I like to roll it all on to the bottom now I'm going to roll it all on to the top so you can see the bottom there then I'm going to roll it back up and once in a while I'm going to have to stop and make sure that it's nice and smooth here depends how big the quilted I have to do this more often with a big coat than I do with a little goal but I really like it nice and flat all right it is pretty flat and smooth so I'm going to put the locks on here nice now we can put the batting on now we're going to clamp to the side of the back there we've got velcro here and we're just going to get the slack out and now this is going to hold our quilt nice and tight sideways do the same thing at the other end I'm ready to put the batting on but I wanted to show you first using that wide seam allowance here because it helps to keep this open and flat and it doesn't tend to want to go like that when it's nice and wide so we're just going to lay our batting out on the top here and roughly line it up with the top of the quilt there so I've got a little bit of extra width here we're going to get the batting nice and flat I now I'm going to baste the batting onto the backing and I'm going to base it with a really straight line so that I can match my quilt top to that line so the computer here has an option called channel lock so right now I can move the machine in any direction but if I click channel lock it will move sideways but not up and down so I can get a nice straight line so I'm going to put it on to baste and I've got a long stitch length and I'm just going to baste over here I'm using a darker colored thread so that I could see my line and it doesn't matter what color thread I use because this basting stitch is going to get pulled out and it won't show on the quilt at all so again I can't go up and down I can only go sideways and that will give me a nice straight line I've got the batting I'll baste it on and so this line here that we use for the basting that's the line that we are going to lay our quilt top on I've marked the middle of the quilt top and I'm going to Center it right here and the reason I'm going to Center it is because I want my seams all lined up and I want an equal amount of fabric on each side so we're just going to lay this right on the top and we're going to make this top of the quilt line up with that basting stitch now I'm going to baste the quilt top through all the layers so I'm just going to come to the edge here and turn on the base stitch and I'm going to go all the way up this side and all the way across the top and I'm I'm pretty close to the edge here again the thread color doesn't matter because that's going to be hidden either with your binding or you can just pull the basting stitch out now we're going to pick a thread color this would be an extreme thread color the quilting would really really show this matches the other side pretty well it's so light you really can't see very much of it but a little and this is pretty much the color of the top here and I think I'm going to use that because I think it will be very subtle and nice we'll be able to see the quilting pattern because of the texture of it even though the thread won't show much on this side I've put my new cone on and with a machine this complex I really don't want to rethread it every time so I just tie it and pull and hope like heck that that knot stays and usually you can get it all the way through the needle and everything so that's really really fast and fun now we're going to pick a quilting pattern this one is called tangled I really like this pattern because it's nice and swirly and here's some other options the maple leaf is really nice but maybe not so appropriate on this particular quilt the rose meander is really pretty and I have one other rosy one that I like this one that's really nice and I think that's what I'm going to do it's got a lot of leaves but it also has these flowers and I can quote it fairly densely and that will look really pretty on these fabrics I've got my cold measured with the end length and I've calculated the repeats so we're going to get this machine over at the beginning here and then we're going to press start and it's going to put one whole row of quilting and it's really kind of fun to watch we call it the invisible quilter perfect [Applause] now we can see one of the big flowers coming out here they really come to life like this we've got a little bud here and some leaves coming this pattern is just going to look excellent on this plain father this is one of my fastest cooking patterns it's got a lot of stopping assignment and quite a bit of quilting but it just turns out beautiful so we're going to let it finish the row then we're going to move it and we'll get the whole stroke done now that we've got the quilt completely done you can really see the quilting pattern look at how nice those big roses look and all the little leaves it really shows up because there's no patchwork it's very satisfying to see all the clothing here is the back side or the topside I mean it's completely reversible and it just looks really really cozy this one is really quite large this would fit on a full-size bed and we used just matching binding here so this is a great gift quote recently I was picking out a quilt to give to someone who was getting married and I was going to give them a cake facet combination really bright but then I went on their wedding registry and saw that these were their colors and everything was very subdued so I chose something in these colours instead because I know it won't get just put away in a closet then I know they will use it so keep this in mind when you want something less not more patchwork took a beautiful batik pick one print you like and then do a quilting pattern that goes really well with the fabric thanks for watching our tutorial today on how to make a less-is-more quilt and remember if your ever visiting Southern Oregon beautiful Southern Oregon come to our store here in Grants Pass thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Jordan Fabrics

Views: 173,471

Rating: 4.9248824 out of 5

Keywords: Quilt, quilting, quilts, 12 block, log cabin, fabric, fabrics, pre cuts, table runner, table runners, sew, sewing, log cabin 12 blocks, Jordan Fabrics, Jordan's, jordan, floating point, Floating Point, North Star, north star, Donna Jordan, Matt Jordan, Patterns, Pattern, Trade, Winds, trade winds, batik, Batik, Bali Batik, bali batik' sister's choice, less is more, long, arm, long arm, long arm quilting, no patchwork, let's make, lets make, quilting machine, plain, grundge

Id: itJ2NxGyn28

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2017