- Hi, I'm Deanna Springer.
On behalf of Nancy Zieman Productions and PBS Wisconsin,
thank you for joining us
for this special educational presentation.
Please add your questions for the presenter in the chat
and stay tuned for a Q&A after the lecture.
Then be sure to explore everything else
The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show has to offer,
including beautiful quilt exhibits
and an interactive vendor mall.
Thank you and enjoy.
[bright music]
- Hi, welcome to You Can Quilt-As-You-Go.
My name is Chris Kirsch,
and I'm excited to be here and share with you
some of my favorite quilt-as-you-go techniques.
So just a little bit about myself to begin with,
I'm a quilter from Wisconsin who began quilting in 1987.
I've been teaching since the early '90s,
and I've taught at The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show
every year since it started.
I'm a little disappointed this year
that we're not seeing each other in person,
but I am grateful for this opportunity
to share what I want to share with you via the internet.
So let's get started.
The first question is probably
why would you want to do quilt-as-you-go?
Well, I think the big advantage to this technique
is it allows you to quilt your quilt in small bites
that are manageable under the arm of your sewing machine,
rather than wrestling a large quilt under that same arm.
And so it allows people that,
that just have a regular sewing machine
to actually quilt their own quilt.
Now, if you like going to a longarm quilter, that's great,
but if you want to do it yourself,
this might be the technique for you.
As we go through this talk,
I'm gonna be covering things like
how to make a small project completely quilt-as-you-go.
I'll share how to make the,
how to make larger quilts in small pieces,
and then I have a great joining technique.
And then I'll also show you two different ways
to add borders quilt-as-you-go,
to quilts that you may not have made
with a quilt-as-you-go technique.
So there's a lot of exciting stuff to come
and I hope you will enjoy it.
Let's get started.
The first project we're gonna talk about
is a small project that is done completely quilt-as-you-go.
It's a table runner, and you can see,
the picture shows just a simple table runner,
and you may do it either as a chevron pattern
or as a braid pattern.
If you look at the center square
and then the yellow strips off to the side,
right now it's a V of yellow, that would be the chevron.
But if I had done a different fabric
on each side of the center square,
you'd end up getting a braid.
So we'll be doing the chevron for this project.
And the neat thing about this
is you can make this runner any size you want.
And so I'm not gonna be giving you
a lot of measurements for it; it's pretty foolproof.
So let's go ahead and get started.
The first thing you wanna do is choose the size you want.
This runner is 10 by 20.
I've cut a piece of backing fabric
and a piece of batting fabric exactly that size.
And I've laid it on my work surface.
If you look at the lower right corner of that picture,
you can see that it's the wrong side of my backing fabric,
so the backing fabric is wrong side up,
and then you lay your batting on top of that evenly.
You're going to then take a washable marker
and mark center in both directions
so that you have those two lines there
to orient yourself as we continue.
Once you've done that, it's time to pick a fabric
for the center of your runner.
And this fabric, this is a great place
to use a multi-colored print and then to draw colors from it
for the strips that you add onto it.
So let's say this is 10 by 20, and I've cut this center square.
What size should I cut it?
I need to cut it so the diagonal of my square
is my shorter measurement, 10 inches.
So if you're making yours larger or smaller,
just adjust it for that.
Once you've picked that center square,
you lay it in place and you line it up with those lines
so that you're sure it's centered.
I typically then straight pin based it in place
with straight pins, having the heads of the pin
on the inside of the square and the points going out.
So I don't have to worry about sewing over those quilts
or those pin heads.
So I've got my center square ready to go,
I've picked out my strips, we're gonna sew a strip on.
The next step then is to take your first strip,
lay it on that square, right sides together,
with the end of the strip even
with the other edge of the center square
and the tail of your strip hanging off the project.
You are going to sew that on
with a quarter inch seam allowance
and then you'll press it open.
Finger pressing is fine,
but you want to make sure you press it open
before you trim the strip even with the bottom
of the table runner batting.
If you trim it before you press it open,
there's a chance you're gonna cut off something you want.
So please don't do that.
Once you've got that first piece on,
it's time to do the other one on the right side of the block.
And so you'll take that same strip,
you'll lay it on top of the block again,
with the end of the strip
along the end of the unit you're working on
and the tail hanging off the side of the batting.
Once that is on there, you'll sew it on
with a quarter inch seam allowance
and finger press it open once again.
Then it's time to trim.
Can you see that on the far right of that last picture,
I have those yellow strips
hitting exactly on the line that I drew?
That's very important
because we don't want it to start skewing up or down.
If it's not, give it a little muscle
and finger press it again
to make sure that it stays on the line.
So the next step will be to take
your next color fabric and add it on.
So I've turned this piece around already,
but can you imagine if I hadn't rotated it yet,
I'd done the yellow and then I added the purple
and then I added the pink until I filled my batting.
Once the batting is filled,
I turn it around and I do exactly the same thing
on the opposite side.
So the yellow strip is put on in the same way,
sewn, pressed open, and then trimmed.
And you continue until the entire runner
is filled in the way you like it.
Now, you could put triangles on those corners
and finish it as a rectangle, or you can do as I did,
trim off the corners so that you get points
on the ends of your runner.
Either way is fine.
If you do the points, the interesting thing is that,
and this may not look that way to you,
but the points on the right side and the left side
are both right angle corners.
So when you square this up,
you can do it with just a square ruler,
and then you're sure to get a nice right angle corner
that'll be easier to bind when you're done.
Once you've got that trimmed away
and you've got your strips on, you'll have it quilted also.
Let me show you the back.
This picture that I'm sharing now
is the back of this piece and I think if you look closely,
you can see the stitching lines that sewed the strips on,
but also quilted the quilt, thus it's quilt-as-you-go.
Once you've got it squared up like this,
you put on a binding and you're done.
Now, I've had people say to me,
"Can I do this for a bed-size quilt?
That would be so much better."
And actually if you think it through,
that would mean that you would have batting and backing
for a full-size quilt being shoved under your machine
for every piece that you sew on,
and that's what we're trying to avoid.
So this type of technique works well for small pieces,
but it's not gonna work well for larger pieces.
So here it is one more time.
So you can see it with the binding.
Again, simple, fun, and easy.
And if your strips are different sizes,
it's gonna make it look completely different.
If your center has a different type of fabric in it,
there's so many variables that make this a lot of fun.
And I hope you'll play with this technique.
So what's next?
Well, what if you want to make your quilt
in blocks or squares,
quilt those squares, backing, batting, and top,
and then put them together with a joining technique?
That's what we're gonna do now.
This is my favorite joining technique,
and I think you're really going to enjoy it.
I'm gonna go to another slide here
that'll show you another I Spy quilt
that I've done with this.
And that first quilt that I shared was
my grandson William's quilt,
and we're gonna talk about that in a few minutes.
This is just a crib-size I Spy quilt.
So I cut my squares at six inches.
I layered them, each one with a polka dot batting fabric,
and I had many different colorways
of this polka dot fabric.
So I needed to take all the squares I wanted to make
for the reversible quilt
and then divide them into four piles,
and then I backed one of those piles,
all of those got backed with the blue,
another with all the green, another with all the pink.
And then when I laid it out,
I actually had to lay it out from the backside,
what I consider the backside,
so that I got the pattern of those polka dots correct
because it really didn't matter where the I Spy fabrics went.
So you'll notice on the quilt,
let's look at the quilt on the left.
All of those squares were quilted
at the size they were meant to be,
and then they were butted together tightly
with each other, and those gaps then were covered
with a half-inch strip of a sashing fabric.
The neat thing about this is the seam allowance,
if you will, of those blocks fills the sashing area,
so it all stays nice and flat and even without any gaps.
So I bet you're wondering now,
how do you do that joining technique?
Well, I think we should do that,
but I have one more slide to show you first.
This is just a small table topper
that I made a number of years ago,
and I wanted to have two different seasons on it,
so it's reversible, front and back.
One is autumn, the other is winter.
On this autumn side, you'll see that
I just picked four six-inch autumn fabrics,
those squares, and I put them together with this technique.
But when I made the squares and quilted them,
I actually used the technique for the table runner.
Let me show you the other side.
This is the winter side of that quilt.
And can you see that in each of those squares
there's a triangle towards the center.
But on the outside,
I've actually strip pieced more fabrics onto it.
And so these individual squares
have some piecing in them on one side.
On the other side, if you look at the autumn quilt,
you'll see the stitching.
So the quilt-as-you-go stitching,
just like with the runner,
gives you quilting on the other side.
Once those four squares were made,
I put them together using the technique
I'm going to now share with you.
So what you'll need to do this
is your squares quilted and squared up to the proper size.
And then you're going to need to choose a fabric
for the sashing on the front
and a fabric for the sashing on the back.
The front fabric for my quilt, I'm doing this I Spy quilt,
is going to be the dark blue strips
that you see to the far left.
And then the fabric for the sashing on the back of the quilt
will be the light blue strips.
These strips have to be cut exactly the right size.
So you're gonna want those numbers, and here they are.
No matter what size your quilt is,
if you're doing this half-inch sashing,
the front sashing will need to be cut
one and three quarters inch wide,
and you need to cut it with a fabric from salvage to salvage
as many strips as you'll need to get the right number
to put together all the blocks in your quilt.
Once you've got those strips cut,
you'll press them lengthwise in half, wrong sides together.
So you're just folding that long strip in half, pressing it.
Then whatever size your squares were,
my squares were five inches, and that's edge to edge.
That's what size I'm going to cross cut
those sashing strips.
So if you look at those sashing strips,
they're all cut five inches long and they'd been pressed in half.
The next pile is the light blue.
Those are the sashing strips for the back
and they won't be folded in half.
And they need to be cut with a fabric
at one and one eighth inch.
Now I know you're all rolling your eyes
because quilters do not like to cut
in eighth-inch increments.
But you need to trust me on this.
If you cut these strips accurately,
you're gonna get good results.
So just kind of bite the bullet
and cut them at one and an eighth.
Once you've cut your strips' width of fabric,
then cross cut again at the measurement of your block,
so these would be cross cut at five inches.
Now that we've got everything ready to go,
how do we sew them on?
This is the fun part.
So you'll notice the block in the lower left,
I have a yellow I Spy block for my grandson Willie's quilt.
I quilted all of the squares in his quilt
with a W; go figure.
You'll never guess what his sister Hannah's blocks
were quilted with, yeah, an H.
You can quilt it with anything you want,
an X, a spiral, whatever you desire.
So all of my blocks are quilted and squared up,
and they're all five-inch squares, edge to edge.
And the other side of this block has a Spider-Man fabric on it.
You can't see it; trust me.
I'm going to take one of the blue,
dark blue strips that has the fold in it
and I'm gonna lay it along the right side,
raw edges even, and the fold towards the inside.
And I didn't do it on this picture,
but I would recommend putting a couple pins in
because there's gonna be a lot of layers.
Then I choose one of the sashing strips,
the lighter blue strips,
and I'm going to lay that on the bottom,
right sides together with the Spider-Man fabric.
I'll re-pin to make sure everything's nice and straight,
and then it's time to sew it.
You'll notice I have my walking foot up,
and that's because there's actually seven layers
that we are gonna be quilting through.
And things will shift if you don't use a walking foot.
I don't even find that my even feed foot
on my machine does as well as a walking foot.
So if you have one, please use it.
Use a quarter-inch seam allowance.
We'll adjust that in a minute if you question that,
but just use a quarter-inch seam allowance at this time.
So you'll sew that whole strip on, or both of those strips on.
And then the next step is to take that light blue strip,
and you're actually going to fold it open
so you're seeing the wrong side of the light blue strip,
and then you lay that whole unit
on top of the next square that you've quilted,
and you want that next square to be backside out
or Spider-Man side up.
So I took the Spider-Man block and I laid it down,
I pulled open that light blue strip
so that I could line it up with an edge
of my Spider-Man square,
and then I did a few pins along there,
and then I sewed that with the quarter-inch seam allowance.
Now you may have to, as I have done in the picture,
you may have to pull back the previous seam allowance
to make sure that your walking foot
will fit in there while you do this.
And then you go ahead and stitch,
with your quarter-inch seam allowance, the entire strip on.
Try to imagine with me now that when you open up
those two blocks with the I Spy side out,
that skinny strip of sashing on the back will pull taut,
the seam allowances from the block
will lay flat on top of it,
and you'll have a nice, flat area to cover
with the folded strip.
If you do this step and you've got a gap,
it means your seam allowance was a little too scant.
So go ahead and adjust it at that point
and make sure you have it right for the rest of the project.
If you open it up and you find the seam allowances
of those two blocks are overlapping, that means that
your seam allowance was a little too chunky
and you need to do a little narrower seam allowance.
This is the time to adjust the seam allowance.
And once you do and you get it to lay butted,
the rest of the project will be a dream.
So the next picture is going to show
from the I Spy side of the quilt,
if you look at the two blocks to the top of that picture,
you'll notice that they are laid down.
They're not quite pulled taut; I should have, I didn't,
so that the steam allowances are butting.
And you can see that light blue strip
has a little bubble in it,
but once you pull it taut, everything's gonna fit well.
And all that's left to do is fold
that folded strip of front sashing fabric over it
and stitch it down.
So you can see I'm folding with my finger
that strip over the seam allowances on the top,
while that sashing on the back is holding everything in place.
I then am going to stitch that down
with my walking foot again,
and I like to use a serpentine stitch, or a zigzag,
or one of the decorative stitches on my machine
as opposed to a straight stitch,
because this stitching is gonna show on the other side.
And if you use the straight stitch,
it might not line up with the seam perfectly
and it won't look as nice.
But by using a decorative stitch or a serpentine
in a matching thread to match the color on top
and on the bottom, it won't be very obvious
and the strips will look great.
So let's do a closeup of that.
If you look at this piece, you can see my serpentine,
my S-shaped stitch from my machine.
And it holds everything down securely
and it's gonna look just as good on the back
as it does on the front.
So that's how you join these pieces together.
Let's look at this big quilt.
This is my granddaughter Hannah's quilt.
I made her an I Spy bed quilt too.
This is twin size, just like Willie's was.
And can you see when I put this together,
some of my squares are five inches,
but some of them are 10 inches?
Doesn't matter as long as it's a multiple
of the original block,
you can intersperse different size blocks,
which adds a lot of interest also
and you're still just quilting the smaller blocks.
What we'll do then is when I was showing you
how to put the strips together side to side,
we're creating a row.
But we want now to put the rows together,
so you are going to cut your sashing strips
as long as your rows are.
You may have to piece your sashing strips to make them,
but they're not gonna be chopped into little pieces.
They'll be as long as the row.
And then the technique is the same
for putting the top row onto the next row.
Just do it the same way.
It's just gonna be a longer seam.
And this is the back of Hannah's quilt.
So you can really see the 10-inch squares
as compared to the 5-inch squares.
And the sashing just, you plug it in
where you need it to make it fit.
It's a very user-friendly technique.
What else could you do with this technique?
Well, I'm glad you asked.
The next quilt I'm gonna show you
is one that was made by my friend, Wendy Reeves.
Wendy and I travel together.
We take groups of quilters on tours together,
and she's just a very talented quilter.
Well, she started making T-shirt quilts
using this technique.
And what's great about that
is if you've ever made a T-shirt quilt,
number one, you're gonna realize that
once you get all those T-shirts sewn together,
you gotta get that whole thing under your sewing machine again,
and that is always a problem.
So usually it goes to a longarmer.
But if you make each T-shirt block separately,
you can just have fun with it
because it's small enough not to fight back.
And do it all yourself, which I think is a benefit.
Now, look at that T-shirt quilt a little more closely.
Can you see that it's made in columns, vertical columns?
And so all of the T-shirts were cut the same width,
which typically for T-shirts is about 14 inches
unless you're doing children's.
But if the motif was longer on some and shorter on others,
Wendy was able to adjust the length of those blocks.
So she cut the blocks out to fit
the T-shirts she was working with.
And of course, you have to put a stabilizer on the back.
I'm assuming you already knew that.
Then she took that,
backed it with whatever fabric she wanted on the back,
put batting in between them, quilted those,
and she put the joinings together
to make the long columns,
and then the long columns were put together
with long sashing strips,
just like we talked about previously
to make the whole quilt.
Once the blocks were put together,
it just needed a binding or a border,
but we're not there yet.
Wendy had one more slide she sent me
of another T-shirt quilt she made from Packer fabric.
And this is kind of fun because the Packer fabrics,
you know, we have lots of those.
If you're a Wisconsinite, you almost have to,
and this quilt is different in that it's made in squares.
So it's done more like the I Spy quilts I did,
but still using that narrow half-inch sashing.
There is a way to do this with a wider sashing,
but for the video we're doing today,
there just isn't enough time for me to cover that.
And if you want to know more about that,
you can always contact me.
I'll give you my contact information
at the end of the talk.
I have one more quilt I want to share with you
that used this technique in rectangles.
This is made by my dear friend, Jean Casey.
She had a friend of hers ask her
if Jean would make a quilt for her
because her husband had passed away.
And he was a businessman who wore button down shirts
and he loved to have fun ties.
So Jean told her she would make her a shirt and tie quilt.
She made it in blocks,
which made the quilting of it so much easier
because she likes to do free motion quilting.
She doesn't realize she's as good a quilter as she is,
so she's kind of hesitant,
but by being able to do it in small blocks,
it went together quite well.
Do you see that she even included
the collars of the shirts in the block?
I thought that was a really clever idea.
And then she put all of the shirts on
and used the joining-- or all the ties on,
and used the joining technique to put them together,
and then she used leftovers from his shirts
to do the border.
It's just a delightful quilt.
And I'd like to show you a closeup
of two of the blocks here, I just cropped in on them
to give you an idea
of how much fun she had with the quilting.
For the Packer tie, here we go with Packers again,
she quilted in words.
I love to quilt words on my quilts.
You don't have to think about where you're going next,
because we all know how to write.
And her footballs may not be perfectly shaped,
but they're fun.
And they fit the feel of that block.
So I think that's just delightful.
In the other block that I chose, the tie contains trains.
And so Jean looked at that and went,
"Hmm, I want the quilting to go with the trains."
And she decided to do railroad tracks.
And isn't that just fun?
She didn't do it with a walking foot
so she got them perfectly straight.
She made them kind of free and easy,
and I just think it makes it so interesting.
I can tell you Jean would never have made this quilt
and quilted it herself if she had to have done it full size.
So I'm really glad she was able to use
this joining technique to put them together.
So I think we'll move on.
Oh, one more use for this technique.
You may have noticed the quilt behind me.
This quilt was made,
and it's the one you're seeing in the PowerPoint also,
this quilt was made from blocks I collected,
exchanged in a five inch lunch bunch block exchange
in my guild years ago.
We all decided that every week
or every month after we had our quilt meeting,
we would go out to lunch,
and we would pick a theme each month,
and we each make every person in the group,
there were six of us, blocks to fit that theme.
So we had trees and we had appliqué
and we had all sorts of fun things.
Those blocks sat in a pile for a long time.
And then my friend Sharon Rotz wrote a book
on Log Cabin Quilts with Attitude ,
where she did funky things using up her leftover strips
to make log cabin blocks around whatever centers you want.
So this is the quilt I made from that.
It is a full-size quilt.
And I think you'll notice again that it was made,
well, maybe you won't 'cause it's pretty busy,
that it was made in vertical columns.
Now you might say to me,
"How can you tell it's made in vertical columns
because it's so busy?"
Well, the reason is the strips I used for the top sashing,
I actually used scrap strips too
and mixed them up to add to the effect.
So let's look at a closeup of that.
If you look at this photograph,
you'll see hopefully in the center,
the tall, vertical, half-inch wide strip.
On the top it's black,
there's a mitered scene sewing that black strip
to the purply pink strip.
And that's the strip that I used
to cover the seam allowance between those columns.
So each of the blocks in that quilt was cut or trimmed up,
squared up, to the same exact width,
but some of them were longer or shorter than the others.
And it didn't really matter,
except when it came to the bottom.
If you look at the bottom of the full quilt slide,
you'll see that I actually, instead of hacking them all up,
I bound them in that interesting way.
And when it hangs off the end of the bed, it's interesting.
It adds up a unique touch to the quilt.
So this quilt has been a lot of fun to have
out on the bed and it's fun to look at
'cause there's so much going on.
When I put this together, because it's reversible,
I could have put all the backings the same
and you'd never have known that there was,
what was going on, that it was quilt-as-you-go.
But I decided to do every other row with a different fabric.
And this is the back of that quilt.
I actually just added this photo today.
I snuck around the other side of the quilt behind me
and took the picture.
But you'll see I used a green fabric and a gold fabric,
and I just alternated the rows
so that you can tell it's quilt-as-you-go on the back.
It adds interest.
I'm not sure it's reversible, and I want to put this side up
because the other side is so interesting.
But it is an interesting thing to do.
It's a fun thing to do.
So now let's move on to adding borders to small quilts.
If you've ever wanted to make a small quilt
and you get the center of it done
and it's time to add the borders, what do you do?
You sew on the borders,
then you layer it with batting and backing and quilt it.
And typically, you need to stitch in the ditch
or a quarter of an inch away from the ditch
in order to quilt around the block.
Well, if you do it quilt-as-you-go,
you'll save yourself the hassle of stitching in the ditch,
which personally is one of my least favorite ways
to quilt a quilt.
And so let's do this.
To begin with, you'll decide what size
you want the finished quilt to be with the borders,
and you'll cut a piece of backing
and batting at that size,
just like we did with the small runner.
You'll then set that piece of backing fabric
wrong side up on your work surface
and layer your batting on top, again the same way.
Once you've done that, center your block,
whether it's a pieced block or whatever it is,
center it in the middle and pin it in place.
And then we're gonna add the borders
just as if we were adding strips to that center of the runner.
So I took a piece of my brown fabric,
cut the same height as my center
and whatever width I want the border to be,
I'd lay it on right sides together,
stitch it with a quarter-inch seam allowance,
and press it flat, fold it over and press it flat.
From there, I can add the right side border
and so that gets sewn on the same way,
and then we do the same thing top and bottom.
So on that picture, you can see that
the strip was put on top and bottom
and sewn with a quarter-inch seam allowance,
and then once we fold those open and press them,
we've got a framed, bordered small project,
and I don't have to go back and stitch in the ditch.
I would go back on this project and quilt around my coneflowers
or quilt something in the sky,
whatever you want to do in the inside of your quilt.
If you need some quilting in the border,
this would be the time to do that also.
Then square the whole thing up and add your binding.
One other thing you can do this way
is as long as you've cut your backing and batting
wide enough, or big enough,
you could put a double border on.
Let's say you wanted to do a one-inch border
in yellow first,
well, add it just the way I did this brown border.
Once that whole border is put on,
then go back and add the brown border the same.
You can put multiple borders on
as long as you started with a backing and batting
large enough for all those borders.
It's a fun way to do a small project.
But now, what if you wanted to add a border
to a larger quilt?
I don't know if this has ever happened to you,
but I have on occasion made a bed-size quilt twice
where I got the center,
I got the quilt all done in quilt,
whether I did it myself or you send it to a longarmer,
and I've got it back so that I could put the binding on,
only to realize that when I put it on the bed,
I really wished the quilt was a little bigger.
That another four-inch border or six-inch border
all the way around would make it look better.
And you know, sometimes when you quilt,
it shrinks things up too,
and things aren't quite as long as you'd like them to be.
So let's talk about adding borders to a finished quilt.
This doesn't have to be-- but not a bound quilt.
This doesn't have to be a quilt
that was done with the quilt-as-you-go technique.
It could be any quilt you've ever made
that needed a border added after it was quilted.
And so what we're gonna do,
and I'm just doing it on a small project,
but this could be done on a king-size quilt.
You still will have to sew it onto the king-size quilt,
but because you're working on the edge,
all the bulk will be on the table to the left,
and you want to table to the left of support it.
And so it still is very doable,
even on your home sewing machine.
You're not fighting the arm of the machine being too small.
So let's talk about this.
What you're gonna need to do.
I'm putting this top border on this finished and quilted quilt.
It's just a sample, but I think you get it.
I'm going to cut a piece of my top border fabric
exactly the width of my quilt top, and whatever...
or exactly the length for the strip
and exactly the width I want my border to be.
And so this piece was cut to fit.
It's about a 4-inch border on about a 20-inch piece.
I'd laid that on there, right sides together,
and I put a couple pins in the quilt.
I'm gonna also cut at that same measurement
the back border and the batting.
So now I can flip that piece over and lay the back border
right sides together with the back of the quilt,
and put a couple more pins in.
And then I'm going to lay my batting strip
that was cut the same size
directly on top of that and pin through all of the layers.
This then can be taken to the sewing machine.
And you'll see we have about as many layers
as we did when we did the joining technique,
so you want to pin it well,
and you want to use that walking foot
so that nothing shifts on you, and you can sew this border on
with a quarter-inch seam allowance.
In the next photo,
you can see that's exactly what I'm doing.
And once I get that sewn on,
you're going to take those three border pieces
and you're going to actually fold them over
on top of each other to make a border.
At that point, I like to use an iron,
even a steam iron is helpful,
to really make that a nice, crisp foldover.
And you can see in the picture, the back border fabric
is underneath the batting strip
and I'm folding down the top border fabric on top of it.
And that's what it looks like from the side.
At this point, if you want to quilt that border, you may,
or you could quilt all the borders at the same time.
But if you're not going to quilt it,
make sure you pin it well along the edge so nothing shifts,
because the side that I'm showing you in this photo
is going to be sewed into the next border.
So you're going to do that same thing now
for the opposite border from the one you just sewed,
and then you'll do the two side borders
exactly the same way.
And once you've done that,
if you need to quilt the borders at that time you may,
and then it's time to add your binding.
Hopefully that made sense to you.
Otherwise, watch the video again.
And now we're gonna move on to talk just for a moment again
about the quilt I've already showed you.
This is a repeat slide, I know,
but I want you to see that when I made this
I Spy quilt quilt-as-you-go, I then had to add borders.
And if you do it quilt-as-you-go,
there's no other way to add borders but quilt-as-you-go.
So this technique worked well for this.
If you look at the quilt on the left,
you'll see that I quilted this with black thread
and I actually quilted the words for the things
the child is supposed to look for in the I Spy quilt.
I quilted those into the border.
Now you might say, "Oh my goodness,
"if it's reversible on the other side,
those words are gonna be backwards."
Well, that's why I used black thread
and a black border on the back of the quilt
so that the quilting is not obvious there,
but that the words are easy to read from the front,
if you know how to read cursive.
This was Grandma's way of hoping that her grandchildren,
my grandchildren will learn to read cursive
because it's very hard to print with free motion quilting.
So it made it just a lot of fun.
And I think it makes for a cheery quilt.
You will find that right next to where the binding
or the border is sewn onto the quilt
that there's a little bit of thickness there
because of the extra seam allowance.
And some people like to trim that up,
but I think that actually weakens the quilt.
So what I typically do is sew,
is quilt a half-inch quilting line,
a half an inch away from the center of the quilt
and that captures those seam allowances,
gives a kind of a trapunto look,
and it actually is kind of a nice effect.
We make lemonade out of those lemons.
So the other thing I want to share with you is this.
I've shown you all of the techniques
that I'm able to put into this video,
but if you find that you're doing quilt-as-you-go
and you want to do more,
I highly recommend June Tailor's quilt-as-you-go projects.
I used to work for June Tailor, and I've actually
designed a few of these projects for them.
So I still do work for them once in a while.
And this is just a brilliant product.
They have come up with so many different things you can do,
whether it's a tree skirt or a bib
or a doggy placemat or a table runner.
They pre-print the batting with your alignment lines
so when you put your strip on,
you know where exactly to put it.
And you can make a project in a very short amount of time
and their instructions are quite good.
So if you find you like this, that's a great way to do it.
And on that note,
you can quilt-as-you-go.
And I hope you will.
This is a fun and wonderful technique.
It doesn't work for every quilt,
but the quilts that it does work for can be fantastic.
And then I'd like also to add my contact information.
My website is chrisquilts.net.
My blog is chrisquilts.net/blog.
I have a blog that I've posted to every week
for almost 12 years now.
And it's always something to do with quilting.
Oftentimes it's step-by-step instructions
for different things that I like to do,
whether it's mitering a border or whatever.
All of the slides you saw today are on my blog
because I've covered these topics on my blog.
So if a couple of weeks from now, you go,
"How do I add that border quilt-as-you-go?"
If you go to my blog and in the search box
put in quilt-as-you-go borders,
that step-by-step tutorial will pop up for you
and you can put your border on in the comfort of your own home
with the instructions right there.
So I hope you'll visit my blog.
If you find that you like it and you'd like to get an email
every week to find out what's going on every week,
please just drop me an email or subscribe on the blog
and you can visit with me every week
and learn what I'm up to.
And with that, I just want to thank you
for tuning in for this and for being a supporter
of The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show.
And you've been a blessing to me.
Thank you so much.
And remember, you can quilt-as-you-go.
>> HI.
I'M DEANNA SPRINGER.
THANK YOU FOR JOINING US FOR THE
GREAT WISCONSIN QUILT SHOW AND
THANK YOU FOR TUNING IN FOR YOU
CAN QUILT-AS-YOU-GO WITH CHRIS
LYNN KIRSCH.
WE'RE SO PLEASED TODAY TO HAVE
CHRIS WITH US FROM HER STUDIO IN
WISCONSIN.
WELCOME, CHRIS.
>> HI.
THANKS FOR HAVING ME.
I'M SO GRATEFUL FOR BEING A PART
OF THIS FIRST DAY OF THE
WISCONSIN QUILT SHOW.
>> WE'RE GRATEFUL TO HAVE YOU
AND FOR YOUR SUPPORT OF THE
SHOW.
WE HAVE LOTS OF QUESTIONS
ROLLING IN ABOUT YOUR
TECHNIQUES.
SO WE'RE GOING TO GET STARTED
WITH THOSE QUESTIONS.
LOTS OF VIEWERS ARE ASKING IS
THERE A PATTERN OR CLASS NOTES
FOR WHAT YOU'RE TEACHING TODAY?
>> I DON'T REALLY HAVE A WRITTEN
PATTERN THAT YOU CAN GET, BUT AS
I SAID AT THE END OF MY LECTURE,
YOU CAN GO TO MY BLOG AND TYPE
INTO THE SEARCH ENGINE ANY OF
THE TOPICS THAT I TALKED ABOUT
AND THE STEP-BY-STEPS WILL SHOW
UP THERE.
OTHERWISE YOU CAN ALWAYS REWATCH
MY LECTURE AND THAT'S GOING TO
BE AVAILABLE THROUGH PBS.
>> THANKS, CHRIS.
THE NEXT QUESTION IS FROM A
VIEWER WATCHING IN MINNESOTA.
HOW WIDE ARE THE STRIPS CUT IN
YOUR CHEVRON TABLE RUNNER?
>> WELL, IN THAT PARTICULAR
TABLE RUNNER I THINK MY STRIPS
WERE CUT AT 2 INCHES.
BUT THE NEAT THING ABOUT THAT
PROJECT IS THAT YOU CAN CUT THEM
ANY SIZE YOU WANT AND MAKE THEM
DIFFERENT SIZES.
IT'S KIND OF A FREEING SORT OF A
PROJECT DEPENDING WHAT SIZE YOU
WANT YOUR FINISHED RUNNER TO BE.
>> THANK YOU, CHRIS.
AND MICHELLE IS ASKING IF WE ARE
DOING THE BRAIDED STYLE TABLE
RUNNER, WOULD WE BE USING A
DIFFERENT COLOR AND DIFFERENT
PLACEMENTS OF COLORED FABRICS?
>> YES.
ON MY RUNNER THAT I DID THE DEMO
WITH, THE SAME COLOR WAS USED
STEP ONE AND STEP TWO ON BOTH
SIDES OF THE BLOCK.
BUT IF YOU WOULD MAKE THEM TWO
DIFFERENT COLORS, THAT GIVES YOU
THE EFFECT OF THE BRAID.
IF YOU KEEP THE COLORS ON ONE
SIDE OF THE BRAID SAY DARK AND
THE COLORS ON THE OTHER
SIDELIGHT, THAT CAN EVEN MAKE IT
MORE INTERESTING.
>> GREAT TIPS.
AND NANCY IS ASKING CAN YOU
PLEASE DEMONSTRATE HOW YOU JOIN
THE BLOCKS WITH THE FASHING?
>> I WAS HOPING YOU WOULD ASK
THAT.
THAT WAS THE ONE TECHNIQUE THAT
I SHARED THAT IS JUST EASIER TO
SEE WHEN THINGS MOVE AND IT'S
NOT STATIC.
SO I BROUGHT MY SAMPLES ALONG.
HERE WE HAVE A SQUARE THAT'S
QUILTED AND READY TO GO.
THE SKINNIER STRIP IS HERE AND
THE STRIP THAT IS WIDER AND
FOLDED OVER HERE.
SO WHAT I DO IS I LOWER THE
SKINNY STRIP AGAINST THE BACK
FABRIC OF THE SQUARE.
I LAY THIS FOLDED-OVER STRIP
AGAINST THE FRONT FABRIC OF THE
SQUARE.
SO YOU A THE RAW EDGES EVEN HERE
AND THERE ARE SEVEN LAYERS HERE.
YOU THEN STITCH THAT WITH YOUR
1/4 INCH SEAM ALLOWANCE.
WHEN YOU OPEN IT UP, IT LOOKS
LIKE THIS.
I'M ABLE TO THEN TAKE MY NEXT
SQUARE AND LET'S SAY THIS IS THE
BACK.
THE BACK SIDE THEN WILL JUST
MATCH UP WITH THAT SKINNY STRIP.
I'LL LINE IT UP THAT WAY.
AND THEN I'M ABLE TO SEW THAT
STRIP TO THE NEXT BLOCK.
WHAT'S NEAT ABOUT THAT IS ONCE
THAT STRIP HAS BEEN SEWN TO THE
SECOND BLOCK, WHEN YOU OPEN IT
UP, THAT STRIP TURNS FLAT AND ON
THIS SIDE THOSE SEAM ALLOWANCES
BUTT RIGHT UP TO EACH OTHER AND
THEY PROVIDE THE BATTING AND
STILLING IN THAT NARROW SASHING
SO THAT WHEN YOU FOLD THE STRIP
OVER, THERE'S NO GAP.
IT'S NICE AND FULL.
SO HOPING BY SEEING THIS AS A
VIDEO WHERE YOU CAN SEE THE
BLOCKS COME TOGETHER, IT MAKES
IT A LITTLE MORE CLEAR.
>> THAT REALLY HELPS DEMONSTRATE
YOUR TECHNIQUE, CHRIS.
AND THE Q & A IS BEING RECORDED
RIGHT NOW, SO WHEN WE REWATCH
YOUR VIDEO, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO
SEE CHRIS HOLD THOSE SAMPLES UP
AND SHOW US THAT TECHNIQUE.
AND LOTS OF GREAT COMMENTS
COMING IN, CHRIS, ABOUT LOVING
YOUR TECHNIQUE.
AND DOROTHY IS SAYING I WISH I
KNEW THIS TECHNIQUE A YEAR AGO.
I WILL BE USING IT FROM NOW ON.
A VIEWER IS ASKING SHE WOULD
LOVE THE ECHINACEA QUILT
PATTERN.
WHERE CAN I FIND THAT?
>> THAT WAS FROM MY FIRST BOOK
THAT IS OUT OF PRINT.
I SOLD ALL OF THOSE.
BUT I RECENTLY RECEIVED THE
RIGHTS TO THAT BOOK, AND I'M
GOING TO BE -- I'M WRITING A NEW
BOOK.
IT'S IN THE EDITING STAGE RIGHT
NOW.
AND ALL OF THAT INFORMATION WILL
BE IN THERE ON HOW TO DO MY
TECHNIQUE.
IF YOU SIGN UP FOR MY BLOG OR GO
TO chrisquilts.net AND SIGN UP
TO HEAR FROM ME REGULARLY, AS
SOON AS THAT BOOK IS AVAILABLE,
I'M SELF-PUBLISHING THIS ONE, I
WILL BE BROADCASTING IT THERE
AND YOU'LL BE ABLE TO BE ONE OF
THE FIRST ONES TO PURCHASE IT.
>> FIRST TIP.
WE'LL SIGN UP AND MAKE SURE
WE'RE IN THE KNOW.
THAT'S EXCITING NEWS.
THANKS FOR SHARING THAT.
AND A QUESTION FROM DORIS.
THE THING SHE NEVER UNDERSTOOD
ABOUT QUILT-AS-YOU-GO IS THAT IT
SEEMS LIKE THE BACK STITCHING
WOULD BE UNFINISHED SEAMS.
DO YOU BACK STITCH, CHRIS?
>> THAT'S A VERY GOOD QUESTION.
I USED TO ALWAYS BACK STITCH.
BUT YOU'RE RIGHT, THEN ON THE
BACK OF THE QUILT YOU SEE THAT
DOUBLE STITCHING AND IT DOESN'T
LOOK AS NICE.
IT'S ON THE BACK.
IT'S NOT THAT CRITICAL.
BUT I DISCOVERED RECENTLY THAT
LITTLE MAGIC BLOCK STITCH ON
YOUR MACHINE.
IF YOU HAVE THAT, IT'S A GREAT
WAY TO GO.
EVEN IF YOU DON'T DO THAT, IF
YOU JUST START, BECAUSE
EVERYTHING IS UNDERNEATH THE
NEXT PIECE OF FABRIC, THERE'S
NOWHERE FOR IT TO COME APART AND
IT HOLDS TOGETHER QUITE WELL
EVEN IF YOU DON'T BACK STITCH.
>> GREAT.
BARB IS ASKING CAN YOU REMIND US
WHAT SIZE OF THE FRONT FOLDED
AND BACK STRIPS ARE.
>> OH, MY GOODNESS.
I'M SORRY.
I DON'T HAVE THAT ON THE TOP OF
MY HEAD.
I'D HAVE TO REWAF REWATCH THE VIDEO.
>> YOU HAVE THE STRIPS WITH YOU.
>> OH.
THANK YOU.
I BELIEVE THE FOLDED ONE WAS
1 3/4 AND THE BACK ONE WAS
1 1/8.
>> VISUAL REMINDERS.
WE KNOW IT'S AT YOUR BLOG SITE,
TOO.
GREAT QUESTION, BARB, AND GREAT
QUIZZING OF CHRIS'S MEMORY, TOO.
ANOTHER COMMENT FROM A VIEWER IN
WEST VIRGINIA.
SHE LOVES THE SERPENTINE STITCH.
MORE OF A COMMENT THAN A
QUESTION.
SO USE THOSE DETECTIVE DECORATIVE
STITCHES.
>> I AGREE.
IT'S MY FAVORITE.
>> THE CURVES.
A VIEWER IS ALSO ASKING ABOUT
THANK YOU FOR THIS GREAT INFO.
ON THE QUILT BEHIND YOU, DID YOU
FREE MOTION QUILT EACH BLOCK
WITH A DIFFERENT PATTERN?
AND BECKY ON FACEBOOK IS ASKING
ABOUT YOUR QUILT.
>> YES.
I DID.
I LOVE TO FREE MOTION QUILT.
THAT'S THE ONE DOWNSIDE OF
QUILT-AS-YOU-GO.
IT'S ALL STRAIGHT LINE.
BUT IT'S A GREAT TECHNIQUE.
SO I MADE THE QUILT BEHIND ME IN
LONG STRIPS AND THEN I DID JUST
SOME FUN -- I USED WALKING FOOT,
BUT I KIND OF LET THE LINES
WEAVE DOWN THE WHOLE LENGTH OF
IT AND THREW IN A COUPLE STARS
AS I WENT.
I WAS ONLY QUILTING SOMETHING 10
INCHES WIDE, SO IT WASN'T A
STRUGGLE TO GET IT UNDER THE
MACHINE.
>> WE HAVE SEVERAL VIEWERS
ASKING, INCLUDING A VIEWER IN
MINNESOTA AND TERRY ON YOUTUBE,
EXPLAIN AGAIN, PLEASE, THE SEVEN
LAYERS IN THE BLOCKS AND SHOW
HOW THE SECOND BLOCK IS
ATTACHED, PLEASE.
>> I WOULD BE HAPPY TO DO THAT
AGAIN.
SO HERE IS MY LITTLE SAMPLE.
YOU START WITH JUST THE BLOCK
AND YOU START WITH YOUR 1 1/8
INCH STRIP THAT'S NOT FOLDED
OVER AND YOUR FOLDED-OVER 1 3/4
INCH STRIP.
THE FOLDED-OVER STRIP GOES
AGAINST THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE
BLOCK, WHATEVER YOU THINK IS THE
FRONT OF THE QUILT.
YOU LAY THOSE STRIPS EVEN.
THAT GIVES YOU THE SEVEN LAYERS,
TWO LAYERS FOR THE FIRST STRIP,
THE OUTSIDE FABRIC FOR YOUR
QUILT BLOCK, THE BATTING, THE
BACK FABRIC AND THE LAST STRIP.
ONCE YOU'VE GOT THEM ALL LINED
UP, I PUT A FEW PINS IN AND THEN
SEW THAT WITH A QUARTER INCH
SEAM ALLOWANCE.
THEN I CAN TAKE THE SKINNY STRIP
AND FOLD IT OPEN.
GRAB MY NEXT BLOCK, PUT THE BACK
SIDE OF THIS BLOCK AGAINST THAT
STRIP.
NOW IT'S A SKINNY STRIP, BUT
WHEN I TURN THIS AROUND, YOU CAN
SEE THAT BY FOLDING THIS, I HAVE
A VERY EASY TIME SEWING THAT
WITH A 1/4 INCH SEAM.
WHEN I OPEN IT UP, IT FLATTENS
OUT AND MAKES THE SASHING ON THE
BACK OF THE BLOCK.
ON THE OTHER SIDE WHEN THOSE
SEAM ALLOWANCES BUTT TOGETHER,
THAT'S WHAT FILLS IN BEHIND THE
SASHINGSASHING STRIP.
THE STRIP FOLDS OVER AND THAT'S
WHERE I USE MY DECORATIVE STITCH
TO STITCH IT DOWN.
THOSE STITCHES LOOK GOOD FRONT
AND BACK WHERE IF YOU TRIED TO
JUST TOPSTITCH, IT WOULDN'T LOOK
GOOD ON THE OTHER SIDE.
HOPEFULLY THAT HELPS.
>> THANKS FOR THE REVIEW, CHRIS.
IT HELPED.
GREAT JOB.
A COUPLE MORE COMMENTS AND
QUESTIONS.
KATIE ANN ON FACEBOOK IS SHARING
I NEED TO TRY THIS TECHNIQUE AND
SHE LOVES YOUR NECKLACE.
>> OH.
THANK YOU.
I ALWAYS LIKE TO BUY THINGS AND
ENCOURAGE ARTISTS AT ART FAIRS.
I LOVE THIS ONE.
MY HUSBAND'S LIKE IT'S YOURS.
>> WOW.
GREAT FIND.
WE HAVE A VIEWER ON YOUTUBE
ASKING, CHRIS, WHEN DID YOU
BEGIN TO QUILT AND WHO INSPIRED
YOU?
AND THAT'S FROM LORI BIKMAN.
>> HI, LORI.
EVERYBODY WATCH HER VIDEO.
SHE'S NEXT.
I LEARNED TO QUILT IN 1987, A
VERY LONG TIME AGO BECAUSE MY
SISTER-IN-LAW TALKED ME INTO
TAKING A CLASS.
I BECAME ADDICTED.
I'VE LOVED IT EVER SINCE.
I LOVE ALL ASPECTS OF QUILTING.
I HAVE THIS MEMORY FOR TIPS AND
TECHNIQUES AND I LOVE TO SHARE,
SO IT'S A BLESSING.
>> LOVE YOUR TEACHING
TECHNIQUES.
IT'S SO GREAT TO TAKE IN YOUR
CLASSES, CHRIS.
ANOTHER COMMENT FROM TERESA IN
WISCONSIN.
THIS IS AWESOME.
I'M ALREADY THINKING OF SEVERAL
PROJECTS THAT I WILL USE THE
TECHNIQUES FOR AND A BIG THANK
YOU WITH FIVE EXCLAMATION
POINTS.
>> WHOO.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU.
I'M GLAD YOU ENJOYED.
>> AND THIS IS A COMMENT FROM
MICHELLE.
SHE NEVER IMAGINED THAT SHE
WOULD BE ABLE TO QUILT SO
CREATIVELY ON HER LITTLE HOME
SEWING MACHINE.
THIS COULD BE A GAME-CHANGER FOR
HER, SHE'S SHARING.
SO THANK YOU FOR SHOWING US
THESE TECHNIQUES WE CAN DO ON
OUR DOMESTIC SEWING MACHINES.
>> I LOVE THAT.
THAT WAS THE REASON I NAMED THE
LECTURE "YOU CAN
QUILT-AS-YOU-GO," BECAUSE I HAVE
SO MANY STUDENTS THAT ARE LIKE I
CAN'T DO IT.
I HAVE TO PAY SOMETHING.
I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST
LONG-ARMERS.
THEY'RE WONDERFUL.
BUT SOMETIMES IT'S NICE TO BE
ABLE TO DO IT ALL YOURSELF.
>> WELL, YOU CERTAINLY HAVE
GIVEN US THE INSPIRATION TO DO
SO.
WE LOVE TO SEE YOUR QUILTS.
WE'LL HEAD OVER TO YOUR BLOG
SITE AND SHARE THAT SITE WITH US
AGAIN SO WE CAN WATCH FOR ALL
THE NEW THINGS YOU'RE COMING OUT
WITH.
>> MY WEBSITE IS
chrisquilts.net AND FROM THERE
YOU CAN GET TO MY BLOG AND SEE
ALL THE QUILTS IN MY GALLERY.
I TRAVEL AND DO WORKSHOPS.
PLEASE VISIT MY BLOG AND SEND ME
AN EMAIL.
>> WE LOOK FORWARD TO STAYING IN
TOUCH AND THANK YOU SO MUCH,
CHRIS, FOR MAKING TIME FOR
SHARING YOUR THOUGHTS WITH US
DURING THIS LIVE Q & A AND FOR
SHARING ALL YOUR TECHNIQUES IN
YOUR PRESENTATION TODAY.
>> IT WAS MY PLEASURE.
THANKS FOR INVITING ME.
GOD BLESS.
BYE.
>> THANK YOU, EVERYONE, FOR
TUNING IN.
BE SURE TO HEAD OVER TO QUILT
quiltshow.com AND VISIT ALL THE
VENDORS AND MAKE SURE TO VISIT
AND VIEW ALL OF THE SPECIAL
QUILT EXHIBITS.
THEY'RE JUST BEAUTIFUL.
ENJOY.
- Deanna Springer: Thanks again for joining us.
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