Stitch in the Ditch by Barb Sackel for QuiltWoman.com

hi my name is barb Sacco today's video is made possible by quote woman calm in this video today I will be showing you how to do quilting in the ditch but before we get to the actual stitching part of this we have to prepare our quilt top so you can see I have my quilt top on the ironing board I have pressed it nicely and remember I have said press not ironed because if you iron hard you will distort it so remember to press gently now I have taken my quilt top and laid it out on a piece of batting for measurement so my batting is two to three maybe even four inches bigger than my quilt top all the way around so first thing I'm going to do is look at my batting and see if I have any dark little strings or pieces of lint that will show through my lighter areas and I'm going to pick them off and make sure that my bedding is cleaned normally when you do a big quilt and it comes out of the package you don't have to worry about this but with a little stuff I do use scraps so I've cleaned up my batting and now I'm going to lay it on the ironing board I'm going to lay the quilt on top of it centered and I'm going to press my quilt gently into the batting the banding is going to adhere to the back of the cotton when you do use cotton fabric and batting they have like little lips that kind of cling to each other and it kind of just makes your pinning a little bit easier coming on now if you're wondering what kind of batting I use I prefer to use Hobbes heirloom batting this is a 64 cotton polyester blend and I think it the drape is just beautiful for your quilt so I tend to go mostly with this batting another thing that you have to consider when you pick out your bed is what is the distance that you can so between meet that means some battens will say you have four inches and beyond that you have two so within a four inches radius so that your coat doesn't come apart later on some battens out there do give you up to ten inches that you can so between personally I don't like the looks of quilting that far apart I think the four inches which is the most general number that you'll find works quite nicely in we capture that almost always across the board so you'll see that I have just ironed or pressed my quilt top onto the batting now I'm going to take my bedding which I have previously prepared which means I have laid my quilt top out on a piece of fabric and I've cut extra large all the way around and I have pressed it so I'm going to turn this over lay my backing right on top of my quilt top right sides out and I do want to peek just to make sure that it's large enough and I believe I have totally captured it so I'm going to lay my backing on it and now I'm going to iron my backing onto my bedding from the backside let me get the tippy-top up here when you pin based bigger quilts you can't use this method for obvious reasons it's just too big you see how I'm going from the center and pushing my fabric out and this is getting it nice and flat for me always just see I'm just pushing that backing it's clinging to the batting and forming a very nice sandwich for me there it is the ripple again and I'm going to continue pressing that ripple right out there now I'm going to take this sandwich and I'm barely going to touch it because it's adhered very nicely I'm going to take it over to my cutting board and I'm going to pin baste it so I'll see you there okay so I have taken my quilt sandwich and I've laid it out on my cutting board or a table or your kitchen table or even the floor if you need to and when you pin base or even hand baste you always start in the center and you work your way out and I will push my fabric as I work my way out to get that top and bottom as tight as I can so I've dumped my chin just on my my quilt top here there's two kind of pins that you different sizes but there is a curved pin that you can use and there's a straight pin that you can use and I'll put these so you can see them they both work equally well the curved pin is a little more expensive but it is easier to clip together when you're done so I'll leave that decision up to you so again I'm going to start in the middle of my quilt and you can see how I'm still I keep pressing everything to the outside and I'm going to start pinning and because I'm on my mat I can actually scrape my pin against it not worry about scratching something underneath if you are on your kitchen table you have to be careful that you don't want to scratch it so you'd want to put your mac down pretty much wherever you are now you'll notice the distance that I'm using I usually use about a hand width so that it you can pin more if you'd like to but I wouldn't pin any less than this because it will generally let your fabric shift a little bit so once I get my pinning going here and you can see again I'm starting from the center and working out and this is true no matter what kind of boat you pin-based you are going to start from the center and just continue to push out oh did you notice something did you notice how I haven't closed any of my pins well that's because after I'm all done I'm going to come back with this little instrument that's called the click clip or by the way you can use a grapefruit spoon that'll do the same thing and just help you move along nicely and close all these pins in just a matter of seconds so I'm going to continue to pin base this quilt top and then we will be ready for quilting I'll see you back in a minute okay we're back at this point we have completed pin basting our quilt sandwich we're getting ready to actually do some quilting on the machine and there's a couple things you have to do to prepare for the quilting on the machine one at this point you need a walking foot if you don't have a walking foot your quilting is probably going to be overlapping on itself in the back because your presser foot is going to push the material when you use the walking foot your walking foot actually walks across the material and doesn't push it so at this point whenever you do quilting and straight-line quilting not free motion but straight line quilting you really want the walking foot so put that on your machine the next thing you have to figure out is what kind of thread do you want to use because if you use if I use purple it's going to show up on the white if I used red it's going to show up on the yellow so really the best of all the worlds is to go neutral something that blends in with every color that you have if you're a really adventurous kind of person you can go into something called invisible thread this is like it's made of the material that a fishing line is made up so you really don't see it it's very thin it is however a little tricky to work with if you decide to go into using invisible thread here's a couple tricks for you one by the best quality you can find the lesser quality is going to break and break and break because there is a stretch involved with going through the sewing machine so by the best quality you can find the second thing is loosen your tension on your machine because remember as it goes through it does tend to have a little bit of a stretch to it loosening your tension will help that go a little bit smoother and if you start to break often loosen your attention more the third thing you can do is lessen your stitch per inch so normally we stitch a kind of a tight 10 to 12 when we do our basic piecing when you do your quilting you can do a larger stitch length and that will help your thread as well the third thing that might help the invisible thread is using a needle with a bigger eye so you might want to go into a needle that's I believe in ninety that would help your quilting too but for today's purposes I'm going to use a neutral thread so that you can see it hopefully we'll have it hidden for most of the quilting but you are going to see it a little bit so let's set up and then I'll be right back with you read it I have my walking foot on there's one more thing that you're going to need and that is quilting gloves because as we quilt we're going to push our coat sandwich around different directions and if you have a good grip on your quilt it makes your life so much easier so pick up a pair of quilting gloves or there's even cots that you just put on the tips of your fingers but anything to give you a grip so now we've got everything in place and we're going to prep our quilt to get ready to quilt it now what I mean by that is we're going to roll it up so that it fits through the neck of our machine remember when I said we're going to pin from the center out what we're going to quilt from the center out so the first thing we're going to quilt on this is the center sashing and stitch in the ditch is just that you stitch in between the two fabric pieces and hopefully most of the time it won't show when I show you the trick so we because we're going to stitch this center piece here if I just left this quilt out like this as it comes through your machine neck this is going to get all mushed up and it's actually going to push you off track that's very hard to balance your quilt at that point so what we're going to do is we're going to take and roll up each side of our quilt so that our quilt is now manageable now this is just a little piece of quilt but at the same time when I introduce this to the needle you can see if it hangs down on my lap if it gets caught on the edge of the table again it can push you and so it'll go askew and you don't want that so what I do is I put this over my shoulder and then that keeps it from getting caught and anything down here and so as I feed it it'll just come off my shoulder this is especially important if you have a very large quilt that you're quilting try to put the weight up and so it doesn't get caught anything and your sides are rolled up so that it doesn't get caught again on the sides and put you off balance so the more you can keep the weight and the sides balanced as you're going along the straighter line you'll have okay I'm going to put on my gloves and let's get ready to stitch okay so here we are at the sewing machine and everything is in place and as you can see I've lifted this so it doesn't get caught on the sewing machine now what you do at this point is you need to find any pins that are going to be in your way because I'm going to take it right down the center seam along the center sashing and this pin is causing me a little trouble so I'm going to take that out right in the beginning I'm going to put my needle on the outside of the fabric my needle is going to come down right in the center between the yellow and the purple now I'm going to assist that needle going in the center because I'm going to stretch this a little bit normally what happens is when you stretch your material out and you stitch right in the center is your material to relax it'll go look in you'll lose your stitching so it'll disappear for you so you do want to give a little tension as you go along so my feed dog is or my foot presser foot is down and let's start and I we can like I said you can increase your stitch length I'll do that a little bit and let's go now I'm going to give that a little bit of tension there is a marking on my walking foot so I can keep that in the center keep the weight up off the table remember it will pull and catch on you and so I'm going to get a little closer for viewing and takeoff now we're coming to a part where it's painfully obvious that one side is raised over the other meaning the seam allowance is tucked under this so it's a little raised when it's very obvious that one side is raised over the other so on the edge that is lower again that'll help site hide your thread so this white background here is a little bit lower if I'm sewing this on the margin error of the background I got a pin here see that that's going to be in my way get rid of that thing there's no back stitching you can see I just ran right off now while this is rolled up because it is so close to where I need to go from my next one I'm going to turn it around and I'm going to start right back on this same sashing going down the other side let's go whenever you want to be very careful you never want to sew over these pins that could be very bad for your machine always keep intention and there we have it okay so now I have done stitching the ditch across the center sashing pieces and you can see that that locks in the center block perfectly so now we have to plan our attack for how to quilt the rest of this quilt remember when I said that I used hobbes heirloom that i have up to four inches that means i cant quilt farther apart than four inches or the bedding could Ravel upon washing so you can see in the split rail fence this is a six inch area so when i quilt the split rail fence i first of all know that the obvious is to do the center but because i have that 4 inch restriction i will have to do at least one more in each block now you can do all them if you'd like or you don't have to remember this comes up to personal preference except for that you have to go within the boundaries of what the bedding tells you so for this particular block I would do the center pieces and then I would go between the yellow and green on each one and then play it by ear to see if I wanted to go on you further than that for the flower block you don't always have to go in your seams so on the flower block I could do the flower petals I could do each leaf and then I could do the flower pot now this area right here again is bigger than 4 inches so I would probably have to do based a couple you know quilt lines right down these to hold that in because again the bedding always dictates how big you go on the courthouse steps you can do just cut each square that gets bigger and bigger I would feel comfortable with that and on the turn - you can't go just these four lines again it would be up to your discretion whether you wanted to go and do you know these individuals because this does fit the 4-inch distance and you're comfortable not quilting that area if you don't want to but let me tell you the more quilting you do want to quote the better it looks so if you have the patience and the time and I would go ahead and quote as much as you can now the rule of thumb with quilting is try to be consistent throughout your entire quilt in other words don't do one block an inch apart and then another black leave up to five inches four inches gap so be consistent whatever your choice is after your black work is done then come out and do your last stitch on your outside sashing piece and this will complete the quilting on your quilt and you are ready to go ahead and put your binding on thank you again for joining me be sure to check out more of my video series and we'll see you again next time

Channel: QuiltWoman.com

Views: 174,356

Rating: 4.863821 out of 5

Keywords: Barb Sackel, QuiltWoman.com, Beginning Quilting, Beginning Quilting Pattern, Marblehead, Marblehead Global Brights, Ro Gregg, Paintbrush Studio, Stitch in the Ditch, Quilt Sandwhich, Layering your quilt

Id: GmJMz9lIgEA

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 16 2015