Quilting Hacks: Tips and Tricks from Some of Quilting’s Best Teachers

I am a lifelong learner and enjoy reading quilt books and magazines, watching quilt programs on TV, and taking in-person classes whenever I can. Lately, it’s been difficult to find classes in my area due to health concerns. Luckily, there are videos and online classes galore! Here are a few I can recommend plus a quilting hack from each instructor.

“Walking Foot Quilting: Beyond the Ditch!” by Catherine Redford

I learned so much about walking foot quilting when I took Catherine’s course recently. In the course, Catherine covers six styles of quilting. We made six quilt sandwiches to practice these styles; Catherine encouraged students to make a fun and simple quilt top and finish our class samples into a set of placemats.

The design I was most apprehensive about was the sixth and last style—the radiating circle. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to spin the sandwich around under my needle and not stretch the whole project way out of shape. Catherine’s most clever hack to the rescue: Quilt the placemat first with a basic grid in a neutral thread color. Then, change the thread to a color that will pop off of the surface, begin stitching a small coil slightly off center, and slowly, carefully sew the circle bigger and bigger across the entire placemat top. The grid recedes into the background, virtually unnoticed. Genius!

“Finishing Your Quilt on a Home Sewing Machine with Amy Ellis”

In this course, Amy presents soup-to-nuts ideas and techniques for creating your own machine-quilted treasures. Starting with basic machine care, thread choices, and more, Amy offers tip after tip to successfully machine quilt your quilts at home.

After dutifully and carefully cleaning my machine—I had no idea I should do this so frequently but, from the dust bunnies I found, I clearly need to (thanks, Amy!)—I was rapt as Amy showed her methodical process toward machine quilting success.

The little quilt below that Amy created was an excellent sampler ‘test drive’ into several styles of free-motion quilt designs. Sometimes I find my shoulders tightening up when free-motion quilting and I think that may be due to a lack of confidence. So practice certainly gets you closer to perfect and I like so much the time and attention Amy gives to working on these small practice quilts.

One of her hacks for free-motion quilting designs that I liked the most came when she was talking about how to practice drawing in a continuous line. Of course, paper and pencil might be the first thing you’d like of—and they’re great—but I loved Amy’s suggestion to place Plexiglas right onto the quilt top and draw with a dry-erase pen right on its surface. Brilliant! You can see through the ‘glass’ to the quilt and practice exactly what you might do with the quilting stitches when you’re ready to sew. You can erase and redraw easily until you find the design you feel is perfect for your quilt. I feel my shoulders relaxing already.

“Nancy Mahoney’s Secrets to Quilting Success”

This comprehensive course covers everything from basics and supplies to many of Nancy’s tips and tricks for creating beautiful quilts in a range of techniques. Covering paper piecing, appliqué, sewing curves, and more, Nancy’s expertise will help you improve your piecing and quilting. This is an excellent course for a confident beginner or someone wanting a refresher on the basics and more.

I’ve explored a number of techniques for appliqué and am always on the lookout for a time-saving method, thoughtful variation, or a hack of some kind to make the process flow more easily. Nancy used a circle shape to show an ingenious way to get crisp, turned-under edges on the shape: use a little starch. OK, maybe that’s not new but here’s the hack that really blew my mind: rather than spraying starch on the fabric, place the liquid starch into a small container and use a cotton swab—dip it in the liquid starch and dab lightly on the edge of the shape before pressing. This controlled use ensures you don’t use too much starch and that it doesn’t spray all over the place! Such a great idea.

There is so much good information out there and available. Maybe it seems like too much, sometimes. These three video courses are a great place to start, though, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Happy quilting,

Kristine