Hang ’em High: How To Make a rod Pocket without Hand Stitching

Every quilt you want to hang will need to have a rod pocket. The tradition is that you sew a tube and hand sew it on, I will never live that long. I hate to hand sew. It certainly would feel like I’d lived too long if I had to sew rod pockets that way.

Enter the wonderful world of glue. I’m a fond friend of Steam-a Seam for applique. But it has a version that comes in strips that makes a snap out of making a rod pocket.

Now we all know not to trust glue. It can, and will come loose at the most miserable times. I always stitch it down eventually for safety’s sake. But there are seams that take stress and seams that don’t. For a seam that has nothing pulling on it, you can fuse it and forget it. And a rod pocket has 2 hems and a seam that does not bear weight or take stress.

Each rod pocket is a rectangle that needs to be hemmed at the short sides and joined into a tube. It’s easy to do that with a strip of Steam a Seam 2.

It can be done in two pockets if you want a break in the center for a hanging hook.

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What size should it be? Depends on your rods and depends on the size of your quilt. But I always go a bit wider than I think is needed. 6-8″ for something small. For a larger quilt, a 12″ pocket isn’t too big. If I cut the length of the rod pocket to the size of the quilt, by the time I fold over the two hems, it’s a perfect size to hold a rod without the rod peeking out.

I’ve put Steam a Seam 2 down both ends of the rod pockets and ironed the two hems. Then I’ve fold ed the rod pocket into thirds. I put Steam a Seam 2 on the folded up edge, and folded the other flap to meet. Iron it down and you have your rod pocket.

So now you have your pocket, without a stitch in it.

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The rod pocket holds up the weight of the quilt, so it does need stitching to hold. But we can put it into place and baste it with the Steam a Seam 2 to prepare it for stitching.

I always stitch a rod pocket down, but I glue them first. I put two lines of Steam a Seam 2 down the length of the rod pocket. I center them on the back of the quilt on top and iron them down.

Then I put monofilament nylon or poly into both the top and bottom of my machine and set my stitch on a hemming stitch. I’ll need the hemming foot as well. It rides right along the edge of the pocket.

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Set the hemming stitch just a bit wider than it sets for a regular hem. Stitch down one edge and then the other.

Will it show? Not very much. You might find the line of stitching where the hemming stitch is, but I guarantee you’ll have to look hard for it. Job done. Not a hand needle in sight.

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For more information about Steam A Seam 2 check out Sun, Clouds, Water, and Rocks. You’ll find Steam a Seam 2 in 1/2″ strips at Amazon or at your local quilt store.

To Rip or Not To Rip: Stitch removal for Zigzag Stitching

It happened again. I was sewing along, in the groove, grooving it when I turned over my piece and found I had the wrong bobbin in.

Not just the wrong color. Metallic when I had intended my bird to be soft poly feathers.

There are several things to do at this point. Certainly one is to put your head in your hands and wail. I tried that and it didn’t shift anything. I got out my mustache trimmer, and really looked at it.

The thread was the Madiera bug body metallic (black core) that’s purple, red and green. If it sounds odd, it is. There’s nothing else quite like it. All three shades are the exact value, so you can actually shade with it. The red was a little much, but it added an iridescence to the bird I really liked. I stitched more of it in and decided it a happy accident.

with and without metallic

There are other answers. This would have taken a lot of ripping if it was irredeemable. Enter the mustache trimmer. This is a Wahl Half Pint Travel Trimmer, that is the no-tears-lather for removing zigzag stitching. It’s available at Walmart and Amazon.

Here’s how to use it

I chose not to rip this time. But I’m equipped when I need to. As You Sew so Shall You Rip is about evaluating when you really need to rip and when it’s optional.

This time I dodged the bullet. And I like it!

Better Out than In? Some Thoughts ABout Studio Cleaning: What to Keep, What to Throw, What to Rehome

I’m cleaning the studio. There is only one reason really I ever clean the studio. I can’t find something.

1006 Twin Dragonflies was missing. Blissfully she showed up in a gallery I’d forgotten about.

I have a small missing quilt. This happens from time to time. Most of the time they’re in a nice safe pile. Somewhere. Except when they’re not.

So one goes through those piles All of them. All 5,378 of them. And that has brought me to several considerations.

You can’t keep everything. You really can’t. The whole idea that you would use every scrap of every fabric is….. monumental at a certain point. At a certain point, drowning in scraps goes from a possibility to an invitability.

Koi, made from embroidered fish I did 8 years ago and didn’t know what to do with.

There’s a theory out there somewhere if you haven’t used something within a year you should chuck it. I’ve found that silly.. So much of what I do is cyclical. I may very well take ten years to find a purpose for something. I almost never throw out an embroidery, even one I consider unsuccessful. It’s too much work to lose. And I never know when they will fit somewhere.

Swish, made with the leftover fish head from Koi

Tools. I’ve had very odd experiences with useless tools I’ve bought that somehow came in useful years later. I’m hesitant to toss those without long thought. Unless they just don’t work well.

Books. I have given up books. At least once I think. They’re books. Throwing away knowledge just seems wrong.

But scraps? They do pile up. I have fancy scraps of sheers and brocades, hand dyed scraps and quilting cotton. And the occasional leftover dress scraps.

For some while, I’ve sorted scraps by size and type. There’s the rock pile, pieces of hand dye that make rocks. On a bad day, I’ll cut rocks all day with Steam a Seam attached, so I have rocks to hand when I need them.

But what about strings? Raggy patches? Snips? Thread ends?

Useful, maybe. But in mountanous proportions? I know someone uses them. But am I drowning? Um, yes. A nice pile of them went to my last class as sample pieces. That worked. But they had to be big enough. So it’s a question of size. I can use a 3″ x 2″ piece but probably not a 1″ anything.

Where can it go? In a land filled with landfills, how do you find them a home? It’s like finding homes for well-deserving kittens. They need to go to the right place. They need rehoming.

Of course, schools, other crafters, church groups, nursing homes all accept donations. Other artists always need supplies and sharing supplies is a glorious thing to do. But in the same way you’ve found wonderful things at the thrift store, it’s a good place to give them wonderful things. Except that it’s mixed in with household goods and sports equipment.

We have a new store in Galesburg called Yours 2 Create that I am in love with. It’s a thrift store for artists and crafters. Not only can you find all kinds of arts and crafts supplies, but you can also donate all kinds of things for other artists that you no longer want to work with. The range is astonishing. Crayons, paints, fabrics, tools, broken jewelry, trims, silk flowers. I’ve always gone in there on a mission for a particular thing, but they have almost everything from time to time.

some of their trim collection

I wonder how many of these stores exist. This is the first one I’ve ever seen. But it’s an astonishment. What an incredibly smart idea! What a great resource!

Yours 2 Create is located at 2188 Veterans Drive, Galesburg, IL, United States, Illinois, They’re getting a big bag of goodies from me next week. And I may be able to walk through the studio without creating a landslide.

I’m also hoping I find my lost quilt. There may be a few more piles to go through.

What Rules? Testing Out Old Theories about guilding lilies

Swirling water, with metallic thread.

Whenever you teach, people want you to give you rules. Directions. Patterns. A safe way to get results.

That’s fair. That’s what they come to class for. What they’d really like is a formula. Add a plus b, divide by six and get your result. I do understand. And underneath it all, I have a list of odd rules as well.

But I do know that they’re odd. They’re based usually on experience. But sometimes they’re annoyingly limiting. And every so often, I test them out. I push the borders, just to see if it’s a superstition I’ve made for myself, or something really helpful. Or if the materials have changed.

This is a process I call gilding the lily. I take a really lovely print or rubbing and accentuate it with thread. I’ve taken to doing it a lot with oil paint stick rubbing.

One of the tricky things is working with metallic, of all sorts. Metallic goes with metallic, right? I used to be quite strict about that.

Until I had something I was embroidering there just wasn’t enough metallic colors for. And then I found my rule was silly. Of course I could dust something with metallic.

So lately I’ve been working with metallic oil stick paint. I’ve been embellishing rubbings with straight stitch and metallic thread, a technique I call Gilding the Lily. Did I have to use metallic thread? I thought so. I thought the poly thread would cover it up too much. I thought it needed the shine.

But I had to work the metallic thread from the top. And metallic thread, even the best metallic thread is touchy in the top of the machine. It goes through the needle 50 times before it lands in your fabric. So I tried it.

How silly of me. I sat down with a pile of rubbings and some beautiful poly neon. The look was different. But lovely. And my rules were so much eye shine.

It’s worth not shutting the doors of creativity because we have a safe sure method, a path we know. Sometimes we simply have to stumble past our safe path to experiment outside those possibilities to something new.

So if I waffled teaching you in class and couldn’t give you a complete formula for a perfect quilt, I hope you understood I’d given you permission to try anything your heart desired. Me too!

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Seeing Right Through: Applique with Sheers

Splash! in process

I know it’s not supposed to be quilter’s fabric. Sorry. I can’t leave it alone. It’s too much fun to play with test tube babies. Over the years I’ve collected a special stash of laces, organzas, chiffons, brocades and just plain weird stuff.

It’s not anything I would piece. But no one would call me a piecer so that’s moot. But it’s wonderful for the things in this world that are, by nature transparent and/or translucent. I’ve talked earlier about finishing sheer edges with a soft edge finish, Sun Rocks, Wind, Water: Elements with Soft Edges.

But there are times you want that edge to show. Edging lace and sheer applique is a way of not only defining the edge of the applique but of controlling the color and controlling exactly how transparent it is.

I’m working on some moonflowers and some snow drops for a quilt called Splash. The quilt features a dark mostly blue background, and I wanted glowing white flowers for the background. Moonflowers are morning glories that bloom only at night. They’re perfect.

It’s also a way of lightening a darker quilt.

I used both lace and organza for my flowers. I do like them to have small differences, so they have their own individuality. Then I placed them with Steam a Seam 2 on a piece of white felt, with some green leaves. Why felt? It’s a spectacular stabilizer, with a layer of Stitch and Tear underneath. Why white? Because it’s all going to show. Whatever color felt I put under the lace will show through and define the color of the finished flowers. Organza will show through the most, lace less so, and Angelina fiber the least.

Knowing that is power. Felt comes in a full Crayola box of colors and it allows me an extra layer of shading in the process. The thread I use will also define the colors and shade things into darks and lights. Here’s a collection of flowers with different backing felt colors.

white over pail blue

angelina fiber

white over pale blue

white over pink

white over white

White on White

white over turquoise

I use a number of pastels as well as different whites to stitch the edges to give depth. As usual, it’s darker where the sun isn’t shining.

shading the flower

I stitched the flowers with a free motion zigzag. Here’s a little video showing how that works.

I did these moonflowers separately from the piece because they’re relatively large and would have distorted the surface. But for the smaller snowdrops, I applied them directly with Steam a Seam ad then stitched on them directly. The cool thing about this is that the background peeks through, like all translucent flowers. It’s a cool effect.

snowdrops directly on the fabric

And it’s a great reason to play with sparkle lace. There should always be a reason for sparkle lace!

Thermal Shock: Shocking Color Choices

One of the hardest things in embroidery work is to get over the match instinct. After years of perfectly matching thread to my project, I’ve had to learn to pick out the highest contrast threads to make an image that really shows up.

In embroidery, contrast is everything. If it all mushes together color-wise then you have a very mushy image indeed. Smooth color exchanges that are analogous and sit next to each other on the color wheel are pretty. But they don’t have much punch. So what you want is color that builds not on similarities but on differences. There are several kind of contrast: color, tone, clarity, and temperature.

Today we’re talking about color ,which is simply the hue. Is it red, blue, or yellow? Or an odd shade of green? It’s not a simple as it looks. There a million reds, blues and yellows and they are not the same.

Thermal shock is about the temperature of a color. Every color, no matter whether it is a cool or warm color, leans either towards having a cool or warm cast. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cool color or a warm color. There are cool yellows, there are hot blues. If all the colors are either cool or warm they’ll flow into each other like analogous colors. But if they’re not? You get thermal shock. Like standing in a cold water sprinkler on a steaming hot day. The effect is kind of visually electric.

Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green is an excellent book discussing thermal variations and how that creates differing colors.

I wanted this fish to jump off the surface and I’d decided on yellow, to give it some definition from the floral like background. But I wanted it showy. So the colors I picked, cool orange, cool and warm yellows, cool and warm blues left it shimmery and gave it impact.

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Of course it helps if you have shocking thread to begin with. This particular florescent is a Madeira polyester 40# called Poly Neon. Neon has a around 800 colors of every hue, but it has a select section that really is neon. I went through my collection of those threads and chose my shockers.

fish scales

Face

Tail

Each scale on this fish has a blue outer ridge, a purple, and 2 yellows. It’s been shaded in gradations to create the underside separately from the top.

The face and tail are a looser gradation that just shades from darkest/brightest to softer shades.

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Here’s a video showing how that’s stitched.

I’ve written a lot about color because it matters to me. Building color in threadwork is done shade by shade, one color on top of another. The eye mixes those colors, which keeps them clear and crisp. But when the colors are fire and ice, prepare to be shocked!

Other blogs discussing color

Lighting the Spark

One Thousand Crayons

Why is that Fish Glowing?

Canva has an excellent page on color theory.

You’ll find Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green on Amazon.

Polyneon Threads are available at Madeira USA

Hard Edge Applique: Redefining the Line

We talked earlier about soft edge applique. Soft edge is a minimal treatment that simply covers the edge of an applique with monofilament nylon or poly thread with a zigzag stitch. For things like water, air, fire, rocks, mist, suns and moons it’s perfect. Sometimes it’s good for flower petals as well. It’s for anything that doesn’t need a hard defining edge. It creates soft color shifts across the quilt.

But some things need that edge. Bugs, birds, frogs and fish all need that hard definition. Or you can’t really see them at a distance. And it makes a huge difference when you go to photo your piece.

You know I’m a color girl. I’m going to want to use color every time I can. But over the years I have learned, if you want it to stand out, use the black for an outline.

green outline

black outline

I particularly have tried it with bugs. Metallic thread green thread always gets my attention, and I reach for it much in the way you might reach for cherry cordial chocolates. But I’m mildly disappointed with it in the end, because it never gives as defined a space.

basic outline

I’ve been working on this egret, and the my process shots reminded me how important that outline is. Again, I’ve been working on doing a dimensional white bird, so it has a lot of contrast underneath to shade to white on the top.

The bare bones outline define the areas to shade with color. I’ve come to rely on 40 weight Madeira Poly neon. It comes in several blacks, but the definitive one is color #1800. I’m using a free motion zigzag stitch to outline, which is why the width is variable. (See post Zigging Upended for a tutorial on zigzag stitch).

I build color, from dark to light from the outline. For more information about choosing those colors, check out this post: Into White: The Search for White Thread Painting. But it’s coloring within the lines. As you can guess, I’m not so good at that. The threads encroach over the line and things get mushy. So the final act is that reoutline.

Redefining the outline

You can see the difference that second outline makes. All the edges that are fuzzed and mussy are now tightened up and out there.

The outside edges will be defined as I stitch the bird down. But having the inner edges cleaned with an extra edge of stitchery redefines all the lines.

finished egret

When I applique the bird on, again I’ll use my zigzag stitch with black thread. It gives the outline definition and punch and helps separate the bird from the background.

Sun, clouds, Water and Rocks: Making elements with Soft edged Appliqué

When we applique something, we think most about the fabrics used together and how they interact. But the way it’s appliqued, the stitch and threads used make just as big an impact. I’m going to talk for a couple of weeks about applique edges, and how those change the look of our work.

Steam A Seam 2

Soft edge applique is for things that don’t have single color edges. Bubbles. Clouds. Water. Mist. Angelina fiber. Sunlight. And rocks. Why? A hard line of stitching makes them stand out too strongly and makes an ugly line. So all I want to see is the change in fabric. Particularly with sheers and laces. It’s a direct applique technique because it’s glued and stitched directly to the top.

I do most of my applique with Steam A Seam 2. It’s a peanut butter sandwich with two pieces of paper and tacky glue in the center. I can peel off one side of the paper, tack it to my fabric, peel off the other side and then place it on your piece over and over again until I’m happy with the result and I iron it down.

I usually cut c and s shapes. These flow into each other, and they make all kinds of natural light and shadow. You can cut pieces one after another following a similar shape.

Here’s a sun and some clouds. Same shapes basically, but they fill in well. The nice thing about Steam A Seam 2 is that it sticks, but you can reposition it. I’ll put pieces up on my design wall and then play with them until they’re right.

several placements for the sun and clouds

I never really trust glue. Sorry. I just don’t. I’ve seen it too often. You iron it down and it peels back off. Maybe I don’t always iron long enough. But I always stitch it down, just in case. Then I know it’s not going to travel anywhere.

Soft edge applique is done with invisible thread in the top and an unobtrusive color thread in the bobbin. I use a zigzag free motion stitch, at an angle. That gives me the most amount of edge coverage.

I use an invisible thread. But which one? It seems to depend on you and your machine. I’ve had some good luck with YLI Wonder thread, but I need to take my machine speed down to a crawl to use it on the 770 Bernina. Madeira, Superior, and Gutermann have different grades of monofilament nylon and poly that you can try. If one doesn’t work, try another. I use a topstitching #90 needle, and Sewer’s Aid (a thread lubricant). Will it break? Yes, I can promise you that. But it leaves a soft edge to the piece that makes water and clouds look more real. If the breakage is making me crazy, I sew as slowly as your machine can.

Angled free motion zigzag stitch

Free motion zigzag stitching depends on the angle your fabric takes through the machine. The body shading angle is the one that will give you the most coverage, but the angle will change as you go around the piece. All you want to do is lightly zigzag over the edges.

Water, Land, Sky

It works for rocks too. Rocks aren’t soft, but their edges are never one solid color. So just having a soft edge where you see the hand dye makes a much better rock.

And the best part? I can add a whole other layer of water lace to put my frog in the water. How good is that?

Soft edge applique is perfect for natural elements. Next week we’ll talk about hard edge applique.

Getting fabric Straight: The wonders of starch

One of the constants of quilting is that the methods of fabric care we enjoy now don’t always work for quilting fabric. Why? Quilts are mostly cotton. Cotton is not perma-press. It can be made so, but it’s hardly cotton after that. It dries at a different temperature, it shrinks, it is more vulnerable to mildew. It does not act like a polyester fabric. And it never will. It’s cotton. It’s a natural fiber that does not ever act like a test tube baby. And it rumples. There are no wrinkles like cotton wrinkles.

So, many of the tools our grandmother’s used to work with cotton still work best. I have a wringer washer and mangle for dyeing fabric. They both are made pretty specifically for cotton and still do the job they were made for.

We talked several weeks ago about cotton and irons. Cotton takes real heat. The old fashioned irons do that.

Here’s the other unspoken bit about cotton. It’s made of fibers that move, shift and don’t stay steady. You can tear fabric straight on the edge and have it still not lie square. There is, however, a secret weapon. Starch.

You know that wonderful crisp feeling that your cotton has off the bolt, when it feels like a thin piece of paper, only fluid. That’s created by starch. Starch is one of several chemicals they use to finish fabric. So is formaldehyde. If you’ve ever walked into a fabric store and smelled a strong chemical smell, that’s probably it. A good prewash removes much of that smell. But it also removes the starch.

We joke about starch in someone’s underwear and complain of too much starch in new clothes, but for quilting, it really helps us out. It means things are more stable and don’t move around. Those moving, shifting, shifty fabrics stay flat and stay straight, making it easier to piece straight seams. I’m told it’s excellent for hand piecing. It keeps the fabric smooth and steady underneath the needle.

I became aware of the starch factor when I began to dye all my fabric. It just didn’t have the same body as unwashed fabric. I experimented with spray starch and found it expensive but helpful. It was also very hard to control how much starch you got. And you often got spots.

Then I found liquid starch. Stay Flo has turned out to be the best I’ve used. It comes in a jug and you mix it to the level you want. I usually use 1/3 cup of Stay Flow to 2/3 cup of water. Roughly. I mix that in a cheap spray bottle.

But here’s the secret weapon. On my last wash out, I put in a cupful of starch in the softener cup of my washer. I also put in a capful of a professional softer called ProSoft or Milsoft. On it’s final rinse, it starches all my fabric evenly. Then I let it hang dry and iron it while damp. Perfection.

Here’s an interesting article from The Spruce with more technical information about sizing and starches.

Starched fabric is so much easier to piece because it doesn’t shift as much.

I’ve been piecing another landscape gradation, and I gave it a final starch before pressing it. It changes how your fabric lies, how it irons, and how it handles under the needle. And you don’t need to stop and smell the formaldehyde. How good is that?