Q&A Friday Week 21

Poppyseed quilt in Sugarcreek Wovens

Happy Friday and welcome to another installment of Q&A Friday.

We are going to dive right into our questions this week.  You guys left me so many great ones last week and an I am still working through questions left on previous weeks.  Keep them coming!  If you ever want to read through previous Q&A posts, you will find them here and here.

Sugarcreek Wovens

Mindy asks: “I bought a FQ pack of Sugarcreek wovens.  I just loved them!  What is a good pattern to use for wovens?  Should I mix cottons and wovens or should wovens be used alone?”

Answer:  I did a whole post on Sewing with Wovens that you will find here.  I cover a lot of the questions that surround working with woven fabrics in that post:  what they are, how are they different from quilting cottons, can we mix the two etc.

I designed my Poppyseed quilt to work beautifully with the woven fat quarters.  It’s fat quarter friendly and simple to piece.  You will find it in my Etsy shop here.  

Another question about wovens came in from Marcy:

“Hi Corey, I sure do enjoy your posts, thank you so much!  I was wondering if it’s okay to use your woven fabrics for a binding?  I have some of your Sugarcreek Striped Pistachio.  I think this is a woven and also think it would be so pretty for a binding on my quilt.

Makers Tote in Sugarcreek Fabric–binding on bag is a woven fabric

Answer:  I like using wovens for binding.  They are a thinner fabric than quilting cotton so they press up so nicely.  I used the gray stripe from Sugarcreek wovens on a number of quilts as well as on the bag above.  Because the wovens are thinner, they will wear more quickly for binding than regular quilting cottons will.  I don’t know if you have any old quilts that have been washed and used a lot–but sometimes that outside edge of the binding will start to wear.  That will happen quicker with wovens as your binding so just keep that in mind.

And on to another question about binding from Cheryl:

“Hi Corey, I was wondering what width binding you use on your quilts and if you hand sew them or machine sew them?”

gingham binding

Answer:  I used to do all of my binding by hand–machine sew to the front and then hand sew down on the back.  This worked great until I started making so many quilts each year!  When my very first fabric line, Prairie, came out my mom, Grandma, and Aunt Susie, came over and we had a binding party.  I made lunch and we all sat and hand sewed bindings down.

Canning Day Stripe for binding

When Sundrops came out, I started doing all of my binding 100% by machine.  I have tried both machine quilting to the back and then bringing the binding around to the front and top stitching down as well as machine stitching on the front and then stitching in the ditch also on the front (catching the backside of the binding as you go) to finish.  The latter method works best if you hold everything in place with some Elmer’s washable school glue before stitching in the ditch.  I have found that I prefer stitching to the back and then bringing to the front and top stitching.

It took me quite awhile before I was happy with my machine stitched binding.  The first method I was happy with was a faux piped binding.  I shared a tutorial for that here.  I also shared a video tutorial on this method:

It wasn’t until I switched to using a 2″ width binding that I became much happier with regular machine binding.  By using a 2″ width (I had previously used 2 1/4″) I was able to snug the binding tight up against the edge of the quilt.  This left a lot less wiggle room for uneven stitching on the back side when I was stitching from the front.  This was always the thing that frustrated me the most–when that stitching line on the back didn’t run even with the seam of the binding and wiggled around.

I shared the way I now do machine binding in this video (it is for a pillow but I use the exact same technique on my quilts):

Lynn Nowak had a question about the fabric bundle I shared last week:

“Are all the fabrics in the photo from the same line?  If so what is it.  Love it.”

Answer:  No, they are from a variety of lines.  Starting with floral print on the white background and working clockwise they are from the following lines:

Floral print on white: Sugarcreek

Red/Pink plus: Canning Day

Plus on Charcoal: Boro Wovens Foundations

Strawberries on Dark Gray: Strawberry Jam

Dark Gray Stripe: Canning Day

Dark Gray Alphabet: Strawberry Jam

Floral print on Dark Gray: Sugarcreek

Plus on Dark Gray: Sugarcreek Wovens

Floral Rings on Dark Gray: Sugarcreek

Plus on Gray: Boro Wovens Foundations

Lacy Doilies on Gray: Pepper & Flax

Rosebuds on Light Gray: Strawberry Jam

Plus on Light Gray: Boro Wovens Foundations

Light Gray letters/polka on white: Sugarcreek

Gray Gingham: Strawberry Jam

Sincerely Yours Quilt in Strawberry Jam

Thank you so much for your questions!  I am working on a Hand Quilting Q&A post as I always get asked so many questions about hand quilting.

If you have any hand quilting questions, be sure to leave them in the comments.  If you all ready left me a question over on Instagram, I am keeping track of those also.  Thank you to those of you that left those questions on Instagram!–so many great ones over there. =)  Of course, you can leave me any other non-hand quilting related questions as well. =)

Wishing you all a beautiful Resurrection weekend! =)  Be back soon, Corey