How wide should sashing be?

Quilting Weekly’s HOT TIP OF THE WEEK!

How wide should my sashing strips be?

This is a question that many students have asked me over the years and I thought I would shed some light on this subject for all of you.

Sashing strips are used in quilts for more reasons than just to enlarge a quilt. Sashing can be a crucial part of the design and should get some serious attention. Using sashing strips with or without corner stones, will make plain blocks take center stage, while busy blocks find a place to rest. But be careful on how large those strips get. Because sashing strips that are cut too large can over power the quilt block and the block may get totally lost.

Follow this simple rule and your sashing compliments the blocks, instead of competing with them.

A good rule of thumb states that maximum sashing width should not be more than ¼ of the finished width of you block. Example: A 12 inch finished block should not have sashing larger than 3 inches.

What about a narrow sashing strip? How small can I go?

Minimum width is more flexible. It all depends on the look you’re going for. Using our 12 inch block again for our example, you can use a framing strip of say 1 or 2 inches wide, or go for a really narrow one. A leaded glass effect can go as small as a ¼ inch. Just be certain the overall result is in proportion and is balanced.

By the way if you would like tips like these sent directly to your mailbox, leave me comment here with your e-mail and I will add you to my list! Better yet, head over to Quilting weekly and join us in our forum where we discuss things like this and more! (This site is free so go ahead and join)

Until next week, happy quilting my friends!
Chris

Sew Sweet Contest!

I found this great contest by Fabric.com and I wanted to share it with you. The great part about this contest, is it is for sewers and quilters! They have two great prize packages they are giving away in there Sew Sweet contest. And you can enter it everyday until the end of the contest. (one entry per day) but you could do choose one package today and the other tomorrow. Keep alternating or just pick the same one each day! The contest runs from September 18th through Oct 31st so there is still plenty of time to enter!

While you are on the site, you may want to check out some of their other great deals too. Like the "Deal of the Day" or "Weekly Web Buster Sales" and right now there is free shipping on $35.00 or more orders. (I know I can spend $35.00 easily enough. How about you?)

Don't Slip Get a Grip!

Quilting rulers and rotary cutters are the best invention to ever hit the quilting world, wouldn’t you agree? But many of us still have issues using these tools. This tip is not on how to use a rotary cutter and ruler, but more about ways to prevent errors and injuries.

First of all errors can lead to wasted fabric, which leads to wasted money. And let’s face it in today’s economy we can not afford to waste. Secondly slips can send you to the hospital for stitches which not only is painful but costly as well. Follow these simple steps to avoiding injury, maintain control and insure accuracy.

Keep your ruler from slipping by adding rubber dots (sold at quilt stores and fabric shops near the rulers), felt pads (like you use for furniture) or small dots of sand paper to the bottom corners of the ruler. Another method would be to use the ClearGrip or Invisigrip like discussed on this quilters review page.

Protect your hands, and keep them out of harms way buy wear protective gloves. Like the Fons & Porter Klutz gloves.

When cutting lot’s of the same size piece or strip, mark the bottom of the ruler with Omigrid glow tape. Like seen here on Fabric Depot. This gives you a clear visual on the size and if you put more than one layer of tape on the ruler, you will create a ridge that helps line up the ruler with the edge of the fabric.

If your rotary cutter blade does not retract automatically, get in the habit of closing it after each and every cut! If you drop the cutter on a toe………or finger…………….need I say more?

I hope this helps keep you safe and accurate as you cut your next quilt.

As always happy quilting to you!
Chris

Looking for writers

Do you like to quilt? Do you have time to write interesting articles about quilting? If you do, I would love to hear from you. I am spending so much time on the computer with blogging, social networking, marketing, and running my online classroom. I am finding it hard to find time for sewing, video taping and all the things I need to do to create new classes. My family barely knows me. They think the keyboard is attached to my fingers lately. LOL

So I am looking for guest writers for this blog. If you are interested please e-mail me, or comment here with your e-mail address so I can contact you about a chance to share your quilting and writing skills with my readers. You can write one article, or several, your choice. No long term commitments.

You can talk about anything quilt related, even promote your business as long as it is quilt related. Tutorials are more than welcomed. Again the information needs to be quilt related and original material.

What do you think? Interested? Contact Chris.

Name these quilt blocks

You call yourself a quilter, right? Then you should know your quilt blocks.

I thought I was pretty good with my quilt block knowledge! Well that was until I took this simple test. Take a look and see how you do with this test on About.com.

Come back and share your score with the group! I took the test without preparation, and did the 30 block test. I am ashamed to say my score was only 50% 15 out of 30.

I think I will have to review before taking the test again. I will need to review my 5500 Quilt blocks, book first. But then I was never really good at studying anyway.

Take the test for fun, and share your score though a comment here. Let's see who is the smartest quilter out there!

Charity projects for quilters

Do you have a favorite charity project your working on? In general quilters are very generous people. At least from my experience. You read about them donating quilts to all sorts of needy people. If you are a quilter I am sure you know what I am talking about.

This week we are discussing just that........charity projects you're involved in now, or in the past. Whether it is solo or with a guild, church group or quilting bee etc. If you want to give some recognition to your projects why not stop by and add to our discussion, it's free and maybe there are quilters who have quilts with no where to go, and may be willing to join your cause.

Quilter around the world come and tell your stories on our General Discussion Forum.

Last week we learned about hand needles. I started with a list of 14, and asked the girls to identify them, but to my surprise they not only found my list, but added several new ones as well. I believe we ended up with around 23 needles! There were some great links in this discussion as well, so after you read about the charity projects, you might want to read about hand needles. While your at it, check out all our discussions, there is plenty to learn about quilting and we have a new topic each week so be sure to bookmark the site so you don't miss out on any of our hot topics.

Could this be your lucky Quilt?

Could this be your lucky quilt? The title says it all "Seven Come Eleven". This is the title of our latest class at Quilting Weekly. If you want to learn a new pattern that is sure to give you a surprise twist on design, then this is your class!

Site registration is required before you can join our classroom, (Which is free by the way) then choose your class and join students from around the world as each of you put your own personal touch on our unique quilt. Your instructor (click her name, and read her biography) Mary Janes Hoth aka Sluggo, will be there to guide you every step of the way!

If you have any questions about our classes, you can always stop by our General forum, and post your questions or you can e-mail the head teacher Chris.

Quilting Funnies

I recently found a site called Toonlet. This site let's you create your own characters, and comic strips. It is loads of fun to create your characters, and discover your inner comic.

I think I may just have to post a few funnies here myself. I have posted my first comic at the bottom of my blog. I put it in the bottom because the strip was too wide, and got cut off in the middle of my page. I will have to play around with this to see how I can make the comics fit better within my posts. After all we can all use a little humor in our lives. Right?

Scroll down and tell me what you think about my first attempts.