Who Else Wants to Tap into the Quilting Expertise of a Professional Quilter?
Long-time Quilter and Advisor to Quilt Product Manufacturers
Harriet Hargrave
Shares Her Secret Quilting Techniques -
Enabling Quilters Like Us
to Create Family Heirlooms
as Beautiful as Hers
Date:
From: Penny Halgren
Greetings Quilter,
How do I choose the fabric for a quilt?
What is an HST?
How many blocks does it take to make a queen size quilt?
How do I make smooth, mitered corners in my binding and borders?
How do I layer my quilt so I can quilt it without getting puckers in the backing?
What kind of needle and thread should I use on my home sewing machine for machine quilting?
What are my choices for batting and how do I decide which is best?
These are questions that many quilters have - whether you are a beginner quilter or have made many quilts.
As you advance in your quilting, some of the questions get answered - like an HST is a half-square triangle. And it takes about 90 10 inch blocks to make a queen size quilt.
But, as I explore different areas of quilting, I am still faced with unanswered questions.
Answers may or may not be easy to find. Yes, there are tons of internet resources. But, some of them are questionable.
Believe it or not, there are loads of quilting websites out there that have been created by folks who don't quilt! How good can that information be?
Or you can scour through the quilting books you have sitting on your shelf, hoping that one of them will have the generic information you are looking for.
Believe me, I've been there. I remember looking for hours through my books trying to find instructions for making a border using isosceles triangles. Never did find it, and I ended up spending hours figuring it out myself.
Years of Quilting Frustration and Messed-up Quilts
Years ago when I started quilting, getting information about quilting techniques was almost worse than in the late 1800s and early 1900s. At least then, women's magazines and newspapers published patterns and instructions - so there might have been some hope of discovering a technique or shortcut that would help you make the quilt you were working on.
And, way back then, there were other quilters nearby - in your town or at the local dry goods store - who could help.
Not so in the early 1980s.
The back of your quilt will never look like this
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Yes, there were a few quilters around, but not so many innovative techniques or range of experience. We were all kind of learning together.
And the quilt shops and book stores didn't have many books with general quilting techniques.
Oh, how I wished I had a book showing me how to layer my first quilt!
It was so long ago that I don't really remember how I did it, but suffice it to say, it wasn't even close to being right, because I ended up with puckers and gaps all over the back.
Plus, what does it really mean that you only need to quilt every 6 inches?
That's what it said on the package of batting. And that's what I did.
The problem is that I didn't understand that it probably meant that I needed to quilt every 6 inches going in all directions - not just in a channel 6 inches wide.
How was I to know? I didn't have anyone showing me or explaining it, or looking at a book to let me know how it really worked.
And then there was the actual quilting.
A quilting friend told me that the best way to learn how to make quilting stitches was to poke the needle up and down through the layers of the quilt as if each poke were an individual stitch. As easy as that seemed, when I looked at the back, the stitches were all crooked and not evenly spaced.
It turned out that she didn't know how to hand quilt using a rocking motion with her needle. It would have been nice to have a resource other than her for guidance.
My friend told me to start and stop my quilting stitches by wrapping the stitches in place 2-3 times. It didn't take long for them to start unwinding, creating a big problem since the threads were so short. |
And then there was the quilters' knot.
She told me that I should begin and end my quilting stitches by stitching in place 2-3 times.
Even as I did it, I wondered how that would keep the stitches in place over time. But, who was I to question a home economics teacher who had been making quilts for years?
I finished the quilt using that technique, and was quite proud of my accomplishment.
Yet, after just one washing, the stitches started unraveling. And that was a big problem.
Even though I left tails tucked inside the quilt, when the stitches came out, the thread was only about 1 inch long - too short to do much of anything with.
I couldn't re-loop them, and still didn't know about tying a quilters' knot.
I ended up un-quilting several stitches until I got a thread long enough to re-loop. And then added quilting stitches where they were removed.
What a pain!
And I was so happy later when I took a workshop and learned about using a quilters' knot to start and end my quilting stitches.
I wonder whether she ever learned about a quilters' knot.
And then there was using a hoop or frame for hand quilting. Nobody told me that would help. So there I was trying to get my fabric smooth and just lap quilting this twin size quilt with no help from a frame or hoop.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Tons of Quilting Techniques Revealed
As you can imagine, after that experience, I didn't rely on that quilting friend to teach me other quilting techniques. Fortunately I was able to find workshops where I began to learn many of the how-tos of quilting.
But it took years of workshops, tons of books, and thousands of dollars to learn all I know now. And every day, I discover something new in the world of quilting or a new technique to make my quilting easier and more fun.
I'm sure you know quilters who have exactly the same experience.
And, it doesn't seem to matter how much quilting experience quilters have. There are ideas and techniques explored by others that we haven't come across yet.
For years I have relied on a couple of basic quilting books as resources for new techniques.
Each one offers something different. One has some more basic skills and techniques, and appears to be written by novice quilters. There are certain advantages to that for beginner quilters.
But, the big disadvantage is that there are no creative techniques offered. You'll find just the stuff done by quilters for the last two centuries.
Well, there is information about using a rotary cutter.
But many of the new shortcuts and techniques that make quilting easier and more fun are missing.
The other basic quilting book has several new techniques, but assumes that every reader has a more-than-basic knowledge of quilting.
How frustrating is that for a beginning quilter?
Several of the methods I looked up were even beyond my understanding as I read them. I ended up wasting fabric trying to figure it all out through experimentation, since I wasn't able to just read, look at the pictures and understand how to do it.
 This brand new quilting resource will make your quilting journey fun and easy. |
So, maybe you can imagine my delight when I opened up my mail last week and discovered this brand new quilting resource.
This is the first of a series written by expert professional quiltmaker, Harriet Hargrave, and her quilting daughter, Carrie.
Harriet has been around the quilting world for decades, and is one of the traditional quilters who has made a study of quilting techniques and products.
In the late 1990s, she was voted one of the "88 Leaders of the Quilt World."
Because she studies how quilting products "work" in quilts, manufacturers rely on her input as they develoop products.
So she is responsible for a myriad of products for machine quilting, batting and she has designed fabric for P&B Textiles.
And, I speak from personal experience. I took a workshop from Harriet at a Houston Quilt Festival I attended. She knows what she is talking about from her experience in quilting.
As she discussed various topics, she passed around quilts she made using the techniques and showing how they looked in her quilts.
Harriet's quilting daughter, Carrie, has been around quilting all her life—sitting in Harriet’s lap as a baby while Harriet sewed, learning her colors with machine embroidery thread and her alphabet on the cams of Harriet’s old Viking sewing machine.
Even though Carrie started college thinking she would be involved in range management and wildlife biology, her love of quilting changed her plans. Carrie is completing her masters' thesis on "The Physical Properties of Quilting Thread." And thread manufacturers around the world are looking to her for input to improve their products for quilters.
And, in fact, Carrie did a whole presentation about thread during the workshop in Houston.
The thing is, that both of these quilters come from a long line of quilting: Carrie is proud to carry on the family legacy of quilting that extends from her great-great-grandmother Phoebie Frazier, to her great-grandmother Harriet Carey, to her grandmother Harriet (Fran) Frazier, to her mom, Harriet.
Quilting is all about tradition (no matter how you make a quilt) and about the love of creating something beautiful from fabric and thread with your own hands.
With that extensive background, you can imagine how much information will be included in this new resource.
Like I said, this is the first of a series that promises to be the most complete quilting resource on the planet. And I, for one, can't wait to include it in my quilting library.
I was so excited about this resource, that I have chosen it to be Penny's Inner Circle Quilting Resource of the Month in www.TheQuiltingCoach.com.
This must-have course guides you step by step through the basics of quiltmaking, from setting up your sewing space to binding and finishing your quilts. Classroom-tested lessons draw on best-selling author Harriet Hargrave's many years of teaching experience.
Plus, with Harriet and Carrie's information, you will know exactly what to buy to make your quilting easier and your quilts more beautiful.
No more wasting money on quilting goodies that look great but really don't help.
No more wasting time to figure out the best way to add borders, bind quilts, or sew the patches into blocks.
No more frustration experimenting with methods that are poorly explained in other books or online.
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In Quilters' Academy, you will get:
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Whether you are a beginning quilter or a quilter with more experience, this classic quilting resource has tons of valuable information that will inspire your quilting for years to come.
Here's what some quilters have to say:
Vicki Parsons
Review By: Rita Schaefer
Review By: Julie Tenhoff Lyons
Review By: Laurie Tanas |
Reserve Your Copy of This Amazing Resource Today!
Happy Quilting!
Penny Halgren
Master Quilter