Jumat, 24 Juni 2011

Preparing Your Material for Your Next Quilt

By Jane Green


Preparing your materials is a vital first step if you are beginning a new quilt. You wouldn't start a new job in dirty clothing, so why should your quilt be any different?

To get your quilt off to the best possible start, I have listed my pre-flight quilting checklist.

Read Any Instrutions

This is the most vital step before anything else, I learned this the hard way - which I'm going to tell you about later on.

The instructions will give you alerts about anything that may damage or affect the materials in the preparation process, so be sure you read all of the directions so you do not get caught out.

Washing

After you have read the instructions, your next stop is to clean the quilt. The instructions will let you know whether its safe to put in the machine or whether you need to hand wash it, as well as the temperature of water to use.

I was recently working on a green quilt design and did not go over the directions. As it seems, the particular dye they used for this material doesn't handle warm water well and the colours ran and faded in areas, so be vigilant and check!

Drying

Drying is one of the things that surprises a number of quilters. Some material does not react well to being put in direct sunlight straight after washing.

More frequently, there are other materials that may get damaged if you put them into a dryer, so be sure you know what you're dealing with.

Ironing

Like drying, ironing is another step in which you can destroy a supremely good fabric. Materials like silk and polyester will burn or melt if you use an iron that is too hot.

There are too many materials to cover here, so in short if you're in doubt, put your iron on the lowest setting just to be safe.

When you are ironing, start from the center and push your iron out to the edges. Once the material is flat, run your iron over the edges to eliminate any tiny wrinkles and make ready for sewing seams.

If you follow these steps, your material will be prepped and ready to be used in any quilt, removing any possible issues with the fabric itself.




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