How do you feel about a little stripping?

I'm being a tease, but I bet  that peaked your interest. Read on brave quilter because we are going to talk about inset seams. 

Inset seaming is a technique I’ve adapted and applied to quilting but it originates from a couture sewing technique used to place delicate thin strips of fragile lace/ other delicate fabrics into garments such as lingerie and special occasion wear.

Inset seaming in quilting allows you to place very thin strips of fabric into a larger piece of fabric (or pieced quilt top). Once you get comfortable with this technique you can inset fabric strips of 1/8th of an inch wide (sometimes even less as you get better).  

Read between the Lines- 3rd place use of Negative Space
 at QuiltCon 2015- Austin, TX
The inset seams are seem here as thin colorful straight lines in the quilt top. 

Tools of the trade

some of the supplies you will need

You will need the following to tackle inset seams:

Patience and a desire to try something new and maybe even a bit scary.

Sewing machine and basic sewing supplies

Coordinating thread (or contrasting thread for the basting - see Step 10 below)

Fabric (background) This is what you will set the seam into

Fabric (inset) This is the fabric you will inset. 

Inset straight seams: cut strips 1” x WOF

Inset curved seams : cut strips on the BIAS 1” wide

Rotary cutter/cutting mat

seam ripper (very important)

washable glue stick

Machine sewing feet

1/4” foot

zipper foot

standard straight stitch foot

Ruler (preferably 18” long)

*iron/ironing board/ spray bottle of water/starch

Before you begin

Iron all fabric being careful not to stretch bias strips

Step 1: On your ironing board, fold your background fabric over, right sides together, and iron a crisp seam. (If you are working on a finished quilt top and insetting seams after piecing, I suggest you plan your fold on a flat surface and pin, then take this to your ironing board to set the seam).

decide

Fold

iron

Step 2: Take this fabric to your sewing machine. With your straight stitch selected, choose the longest stitch length. 

choose a long stitch length

Keeping the pressed folded over seam directly to your right, and using your 1/4” foot, sew the length of your pressed fabric.

fold immediately to the right 

*If you are insetting your seam into an already pieced top, use your standard straight stitch foot to sew the seam. You are likely to encounter some of your pieced seams and having slightly more fabric to work with helps greatly. Trust me, I know this.

Step 3: Take the fabric to your cutting surface and using a rotary cutter and a ruler barely cut of the folded edge of your pressed seam. If you have never cut  into a pieced quilt top, this part is scary. I suggest you practice first with something not quite so precious, even though I did not follow my own advice when first attempting inset seaming, I did learn (the hard way) that  it’s critical to use your standard foot in an already pieced top and equally important to conserve fabric so be very stingy cutting the folded edge open. 

be stingy cutting off the fold

I'm serious about the skimpy trimming

Step 4: Press your seam open. On already pieced tops, using a bit of spritzed water or starch will make your task easier.

seam ironed open

Step 5: Take your fabric back to your cutting board and place it seam side up. 

Step 6: Use your washable glue stick, or preferred method of glue basting to run a line of glue on the pressed open pieces of the seam allowance. Try and keep glue out of the center basted seam. 

For straight inset seams: Using your 1” straight of grain inset fabric, place right side down onto the glue trying to evenly distribute the fabric strip across the pressed seam.

For curved inset seams: Using your bias cut 1” fabric strip, place right side down onto the glue gently following the curve and trying to evenly distribute the fabric strip across the pressed seam.

fabric inset strip right side down on glued seam allowance

Step 7: iron fabric strip in place to set glue.

Step 8:  Back at your machine and working as gently as possible, lift one side of the pressed open seam/glued inset strip away from the background fabric.  Unless you have been neurotic with your gluing some of it will be stuck. Once lifted away, you should be looking at one side of the basting stitch from step 2.  Place your fabrics onto your machine with the basting stitch to your left and the glued inset/background fabric cut edge to your right. Set your machine to your standard stitch length (I can't tell you how many time I have forgotten to do this), making any needle adjustments for your zipper foot and stitch as close as possible to the basted seam.

Reset your stitch length, reset your stitch length, reset your stitch length

 (The distance you now stitch  from the basted seam dictates the width of your inset seam. Some machines allow side needle adjustment so that you can be consistent every time with your seams and get very small inset pieces.)

you can just see the basting stitch to the immediate left of the zipper foot (The glues is  a bit of a give away)

Step 9: repeat step 8 from the other side.

Step 10: Using your seam ripper and working from the top( right side) of the background fabric, rip out the basted stitch seam. Yes, there is glue in the seam. Yes, I know you don't like seam ripping. Yes, it's a lot of sewing for one little seam. I will however give you a little hint:  you might consider using a contrasting thread for the basting if you have trouble with ripping seams of closely matched thread/fabric. It does require threading and  then retreading your machine before step 8, but for some it makes this step a bit easier. And you only have to replace the top thread if you don't want to baste top and bobbin in a contrasting color. Even little bits help sometimes. 

Step 11: Take your fabric back to your ironing board. Mist the set in seam. Using a hot iron and a leap of faith,  gently pull the seam and glue apart and iron open. 

There will be bits of glue and tread stuck in the basted seam. Gently pick out the tread and after you are all done,  once your quilt is all pieced and quilted, wash your quilt and the glue will go away,
 until then pretend it's not there.. 

Step 12: At this point (after ironing and admiring you can trim the excess inset fabric from the back if you prefer. As you can see from the picture above the fabric shows through. So for some color combinations it is a good idea. Just be very careful when trimming.

trimming from behind, be careful not to cut top 

Step 13: Repeat as necessary, then  pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

With an inset seaming skill base  securely under your belt, there are several variations that can be done with very little adjustment.

1. inset cording 
2. inset flanges
3. inset curved bias seams
4. inset binding (peek below)

Because the inset seams are so striking I continued the visual impact through into the binding. I thank Christine (ccpquilt) for the show of support and great insight on working the binding with such tiny seams. 

Have fun with your new found skills!!!

Hopefully as I have projects that demonstrate the above variations I will blog about them here!

Interesting intersections

February is Kari's month in Bee Sewcial and she has given us all a "posterly" Pinterest  inspiration for this month. Kari is a graphic designer and a friend and you should go see some of her ideas on her pinterest board.  You definitely should follow her on IG as she won 2 ribbons at QuiltCon for her amazing quilts. Her blog post and pinterest board set off a series sparks that lead me on a delightful creative burst. All blocks 11 x 17. All blocks made from Kona solid scraps from my personal "collection".

 Block #1

Block #2

a little bit of aqua background

Block 3#

remind you of anything????

Block #4

Last block- this was the one Kari chose

I don't normally make 4 blocks, but in the continuing spirit of using scraps, I ket going because it was also fun. Took 4 tries to get the one that appealed to Kari. I loved all the rich warm colors as well. This is going to be a beautiful quilt with some interesting intersections indeed.

January/ February Blocks and a birthday.

Bee recaps for January (a bit late, not in finishing my blocks, just in sharing them).
Haven at do.good stitches
January
using this pattern

Aquas and grays

and February.

scrappy low volume, pinks and reds

If I'm keeping it real, I whined (to myself and maybe a little on IG) about the 81- 2.5" blocks that had to be cut for this months block. All scrappy (which in my case means rooting through my scrap bin, again). BUT, I did plow through and this block (is large) became one of my favorites so far. Heartfelt and seasonal and pretty. I cannot wait to see this quilt done. I mentioned to a bee mate that with some of the text print, it reminds me of love letters. Check out all those gorgeous blocks here.

And birthdays (Birthday Bandy)
January for Myra 
Sticking to 2015 sew my stash resolution I opted for some improv piecing (surprise) using colorful 100% cotton scraps and surrounding it with Kona snow. Added some of my inset seams in black. (For scale the inset seams are just over 1/8th of an inch wide). Cap it all off with color matched free motion and matchstick quilting using both Aurifil 100% cotton, 50 wt and Superior Metallic threads for a bit of sparkle.

pillow front

pillow back with hidden hot pink zipper
Zipper from zipit.

Some FMQ with matching Aurifil and Superior metallic threads

matching matchstick quilting and a inset seam
inset seam with right around 1/8th of an inch

front and back (Back/ binding fabric by IKEA)

Keeping it real, part the first.

I made a few new years quilting resolutions which I will briefly recap
1. two quilts made from stash only (tops from scraps only), back from stash
2. Submit quilt to Marsala Pantone Quilt challenge
3. Surrender quilt top and back to a long arm quilter

All doable for sure.

My progress so far has surprised me. Happily I might add. I guess I didn't contemplate seriously my scrap bins until now. So here goes- when you make as many quilts as I did in 2014, you accumulate scraps. Especially when you are quilting from inside your head. I save what I think might be usable pieces and I have scrap bins for prints and solids. Since I quilt with both I have a healthy supply of both. BUT could I actually make a quilt with scraps from just my scrap bin?
The answer is yes!

The "Before" working scrap pile. I found a few more solids gray when I cleaned out my scrap bins further. I had already started  piecing (I had a 12 x 20 inch piece going)  when I remembered to take a photo, but I wanted to show my starting point regardless. (One of my last years "resolutions" was to document more, so I'm documenting). Note:  What looks whites are actually very pale grays.

 I did several quilts last year that prominently featured gray. In many shades (perhaps even 50). I got them all out and realized that most were from quilts that used various widths of cut straight of grain strips. And some squares.  I got started by sewing the longer strips together in 2's. Usually in contrasting grays. I didn't have that many longer strips so that lasted for a little bit. Then sewing the shorter pieces together, also in pairs. Until they were done. Then cobbled as many grays together as I could in the improv piecing spirit of the project. I was also lucky to be in the midst of a great, creative Bee called Bee Sewcial, and one of my bee mates (thanks Hillary) sent loads of scraps along with her bee blocks. In that pile of lovelies was several long thin strips of yellow. I used a wee bit of that too!

working in grays and a bit of yellow. (The Bee Sewcial blocks sneak peek on the right)

The gray pile dwindles (not yet vanished/ vanquished) but what I have is not yet big enough for a quilt. (At this point it's probably 30 x 48 and if you know me even a little, you understand that I  like my quilts to be functional, so unless I was making this for my dog, it hadn't yet reached a size I could call done).
So, last year I also made a few quilts that featured whites, off whites and varieties of near white prominently. So, I dug out those scraps and got to work.

I think if you look closely you can see I had all kinds of solid "whites" .  I know for sure there is Kona white, snow and oyster. There is also a RJR solid "white" from the Cotton & Steel collection (I'm pretty sure that had a much more creative name than white for their fabric, but the name escapes me). Who knows what else.  I began piecing the remainder of the quilt top. Like with the grays, I start using the larger pieces first. I had so many, piece of cake.

Throw in the orphan grays and a pit of yellow and of course the "lifeline" in black. Oh, look how far I got with the big pieces! What! no more big pieces. But there is still more to do.

So, little by little the remainder of the "white" scraps are cobbled together and added to the quilt top.

Until the top is done! All with scraps. Not an additional piece cut. And a very real sense of making do. Improv at improv's roots. Short of trimming the larger areas square, there was very little that remained. Nothing to salvage. No more scraps to use. Scrap bin in gray and white truly vanquished.
I really love how all the seams and the fabric variations on the top make this interesting despite it's rather humble and unimpressive origins. I stopped with a top that measured 64x80" because I really had nothing more to use. That's a size I can live with.

Stay tuned for part 2,  The back, the quilting and the reveal. Remember I have NO scraps left and my backs (for the last several years)  are cobbled from those leftovers. I have had several offers of additional scraps from dear quilting friends but I think I NEED to use what I have on hand and no other. I guess if I make another quilt before I get to the back, I could have some scraps to use, but I'm pretty sure the current color palette for my "next" quilt top is not what I have in mind.

Yet, another challenge and I've picked up the gauntlet.

All you need is LOVE

Happy Valentine's Day everyone……

"All you need is LOVE"

The details:

Front

Back

56 x 59.5"
Fabric top: LOVE Panel from Wooden Spools, Denver, with the addition of 100% quilting cotton Rendezvous by Moda Kid, Two x Two by Windham Fabrics, High Society by Moda Kids, Nora Mae Gaulden Dots by Jenny Eliza, other fabrics from my stash.
Fabric Back: Tula Pink Laminate Birds and the Bees by FreeSpirit.

Batting: fusible fleece, 100% polyester
Binding: 2" straight-of-grain cut from front fabric remnants.
Quilting: spaced, modified Bernina #4 stitch, on a Bernina 180 with a walking foot

the spaced quilting is seen best here

Things I've never tried before:
1.Laminate fabric in a quilt. It's a great idea for a quilt back and protects the quilt if you picnic surface is a bit damp or perhaps even dirty. Wipes clean, but can also be laundered, gentle cycle.
2.One piece back, first time ever for obvious reasons.
3. 100% poly fusible fleece batting since I had to keep the pin pasting to a minimum and this batting will keep the shrinkage to a minimum after laundering.
4.The binding was attached backwards so I wouldn't have to hand stitch through the laminate which can be difficult.

close up of the laminate fabric on the back. I LOVE this fabric!

All-in-all a really fun, quirky and quick quilt!! (Say that 3x fast!)

Every little bit helps

On my 2015 must do list is a personal commitment to use not only my stash fabrics, but all those scraps from quilt tops and backs of the past. Fabric bits that are too big to toss, but too small to cut into any consistent shape.

Some of the fun things I've attempted so far

Valentine hearts- 2 types

Improv piecing (you get a very different look depending on what kinds of scraps you are working with. I like both looks!

    Chihuly inspired scraps (most of these were in odd shapes of all kinds).

before

after

    Black and white (and shades between) scraps (most of these were strip cut scraps of varying widths).

Before

during

after

More on the Chihuly and black and white Sew my stash 2015 adventures as these become quilts….