With Monday's kick-off of our Hand Pieced QAL for 2020 - Book Club - its time to celebrate all things hand piecing! Hand piecing is a chance to sit and stitch, deal with partial seams or curves with ease, and to create something beautiful completely stitched by hand.
The pattern for Book Club will be available on Monday, March 2. I hope you'll be participating!
To get you ready to go, here are my basic go-to tools and basic tutorials for hand piecing.
The Basic Tools
You likely have everything you need in your sewing room to hand piece - here are my favorite tools and notions:
- Your choice of a needle is really a personal one - I like a short needle while other quilters like to use longer needles. The key thing to look for is a needle that you can thread without issue and one that feels comfortable in your hand. Needles are inexpensive - experiment until you find one that feels right.
- Regular 50 wt quality quilting thread works well but I like to use the 80 wt because it is finer and takes up less room in your seams
- Snips (or scissors) are also key - you want something smaller to trim any dog-ears and snip the thread
- For some people, thimbles are critical while hand sewing and I wear a thimble on the middle finger of my right hand while sewing. This one is my favorite!
- Pinning seams is important. The type of pin you use is one of personal preference but I love using short pins designed for applique because they don't get in my way while I am sewing.
- A small cutting mat can be very useful as a portable surface for marking seam lines.
- Basic rulers are important for marking the 1/4'' sewing lines. This specialty ruler - The Perfect Piecer - makes marking sewing lines on triangles a breeze!
- Binding clips to keep pieces organized are wonderful - I just love these mini ones.
- Wool pressing mats (see my review) and mini irons make the job of pressing each block a breeze.
- Templates can be used on paper, glued to cardboard or transferred to template plastic
The Basic Tutorials
- Marking Stitching Lines
- The Running Stitch
- Dealing with Seam Allowances
- Hand Piecing Curves
- Making Templates
- Easy Partial Seams (coming soon)
 |
| Top - Marking stitching line & running stitch Bottom - Dealing with seam allowances & sewing curves |
More tutorials and tips to come - and when they do, I'll come back and update this post so everything is in one place!
Pin for later!
Have a wonderful day! Patty
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for visiting Elm Street Quilts. Looking forward to hearing from you!