Day Six. Letter F. After a little research I realized many quilting terms begin with the letter F.
There’s Felting. I have no interest in felting. I think it’s pretty and I enjoy watching others work at it, it’s just not for me. Plus, felting feels more like an quilt embellishment to me.
Do you use felt in your quilts?
Foundation piecing is another quilting F word. Also something else I have little interest in conquering. It just takes too much prep work for my way of thinking and sewing. I’m not big on prep work. Stick around, you’ll see why improv quilts are among my favorites.
However, for those of you who might be interested in foundation piecing here’s a video from Connecting threads to help you along:
Moving right along we come to Fusible web. This is a handy product that allows us to fuse two fabrics together. There are several different weights of fusible. Those of lighter weight will hold the fabrics together, but still allow for stitching while the stronger weights make it more difficult to stitch the fabric in place.
For a couple of the grandsons’ first quilt, I used the lighter weight to fuse the overall Bills, and other appliques in place. This allowed me to zig-zag around the figures to insure little fingers didn’t pick them off.
The Bear Paws in the corners are pieced, everything else is appliqued with the help of fusible webbing.
The “About Me” wall hanging that I attempted a few weeks ago, here, for another challenge used a stronger fusible. This way I didn’t have to stitch around the edges to hold them down.
The lady has some stitching, especially in the hair. The fused letters have no stitching
Then, of course, there’s Fabric which also starts with today’s letter, F. We couldn’t have quilts if we didn’t have fabric.
Most quilters prefer to use 100% cotton in their quilts because cotton has a good feel, it’s easy to sew either with a machine or by hand, and we know it will last. Many of our grandmothers’ quilts are still around, after 100 or more years, and most of them were made with cotton fabric.
Of course, they didn’t have a lot of choices. Still, I have seen, and owned, older quilts of flannel, wool (not felted),and corduroy. I’ve made quilts with denim fabric (from the kids’ jeans), and hanging on my quilt rack is a double-knit quilt, using fabrics from the sixties and seventies. Satins and silks have even been sewn together for quilts. Almost any fabric will work in a quilt, but the preferred is cotton.
After fabric, of course, comes the pattern. Now I know pattern doesn’t start with an F, but you’d be surprised how many patterns do begin with the letter. Being a country girl, I noticed all the block patterns starting with the word, “farmer.” Farmer’s daughter, Farmer’s Delight, Farmer’s Field, Farmer’s puzzle, Farmer’s Windmill and, naturally, Farmer’s Wife, are just a few of the “Farmer’s blocks I found. They don’t even make a stitch in the number of other block patterns beginning with F.
Maybe next month I’ll make, and post about, blocks from the alphabet.
Finally, we come to free motion quilting. I’m working to improve my quilting, so have none of mine to show. But, quilter Leah Day has several videos on free motion quilting. This is a good one for getting started.
Do you use any of these “F” supplies? Which is your favorite?
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