No-pressure quilting

Since I started posting daily to Instagram at the start of the year, I have been looking at a lot of posts by other quilters, because the Instagram algorithm is so great at identifying what you're interested in.  And while I have seen a whole lot of wonderful work, I've also seen a lot of photos that make me cringe. 

If you would like to cringe for yourself, go to instagram and search on #improvquilt or #improvquilting.  (The links also work if you're on a computer, not your phone.)

Specifically, photos where people have apparently lost the use of their irons.  It's obvious that if there was any pressing at all during construction of the blocks, it was slapdash.  I can imagine what these quilts are going to look like after quilting and finishing, and the picture isn't pretty.

All photos from other people's
Instagram posts

When I teach quilting I give my signature spiel in which I say I don't care about almost all of the quilt police rules.  Don't care if your seam allowances are 1/4 inch.  Don't care if your points match at the seamlines.  Don't care if your blocks are exactly square, or if your seamlines are exactly straight, or your quilting stitches are all the same length.  But there is one thing that I REALLY care about, enough to make up for all those that I don't bother with.  I care that you press obsessively and thoroughly, that you press every seam open before you cross it with another seam. that you press every block perfectly before you trim it to size and join it to others.

It's particularly important with curved seams; even if the two pieces don't match exactly you can usually coax them into perfect alignment with a spritz of water and a hot iron to urge the bias threads into obedience.  

What disturbs me even more about these unpressed blocks and entire tops that people are so proud of that they post them to instagram is that many of them have made their pieces in workshops with (presumably) qualified teachers.  

I don't know how online quilt instruction works, but I would hope that teachers are asking their students to send photos, and that they are pointing out pluses and minuses of the work.  And how could teachers possibly overlook the glaring lack of pressing?????

I would hate to think that the teachers don't notice, or that they notice but don't care.  In my opinion any teacher who approves of work like these examples should lose her teaching license.  Oh wait, you don't need a license to be a quilt teacher, anybody who stays one block ahead of the rest of the class can promote herself as a guru and apparently attract lots of people willing to pay to "learn" from her.

I just read an instagram post, complete with photo of unpressed blocks, in which the author adorably tells us "Okay here's all the secrets to making an improv quilt."

Secret #5 reads: "Iron the seams once in a while but only when your butt starts falling asleep and you have to stand up."  

I know this is meant to be charming and humorous, not really serious, but it helps spread the idea that pressing is optional, that improvisational quilting = sloppy quilting.  And that makes me crabby.  Way more than crabby, if you must know.

Want to learn how to press your quilts in progress?  Check out my tutorial here, and then read on for curved seams.  Take my word for it, if you learn to press properly, and more important, if you make yourself do it all the time, your quilts will look vastly better and it will be vastly easier to work with them.  

Now to figure out how to get the word out to all those people on instagram!

 

Quiltmaking 101 -- pressing curved seams

Just as sewing curved seams is a bit trickier than straight seams, pressing is also a bit more worrisome.  But with any kind of seam, you should get into the habit of pressing as a two-step process.  First press lightly from the back side, then turn the work over, check that the seam is good from the front, and only then press enthusiastically.  You want to find and fix any problems before you set them in with lots of pressure and moisture.



If you have sewed parallel freehand strips into a larger module, as in the block above, wait until you have them all stitched before you press anything.  Then sweep your iron across the entire set, pressing all the seams in the same direction in one swoop.  Fabric has a lot of forgiveness and will usually ease itself together nicely even if the edges aren't mathematically exact.  But it seems to lose a bit of flexibility every time it's pressed, so the first time is always the best.  If you have to return to a finished module and add more curved strips, spritz your existing seams well with water before you press in the new seams.

With more pronounced curves it is important to press the seam allowances toward the outside edge.  It's easier to get fabric to spread out under the iron than to get it to squeeze in and still stay flat.

When you press toward the outside, the dark fabric gets to keep its exact original shape; the seam allowance on the lighter fabric has to spread out a bit on the edge to lie flat.  Not a problem; fabric is usually willing to stretch.

When you press toward the inside, the dark fabric gets to keep its exact original shape and things look good from the back.  But underneath, the lighter fabric has to squeeze in to make the extra fabric fit.  

Sometimes this will work out just fine, but sometimes, especially with very tight curves, the underneath fabric can't squeeze in enough and instead it forms pleats.  A problem. 

No matter which way you press, you may come up with the occasional extreme situation where there seems to be just too much or too little fabric in the seam allowance.  If you have sewn garments in a past life, you may be tempted to get out your scissors and cut notches in the seam allowances to make them lie flat, just as you would do at the underarm of a set-in sleeve or at the curved edge of a patch pocket.  Please overcome that temptation!

Instead, try pressing first with plenty of moisture and see if you can encourage the fabric to stretch out and lie flat.  If it still resists, you can get your scissors, but instead of cutting slits in toward the seamline, cut around the edge parallel to the seam to reduce the width of the seam allowance and see if that works.  You can safely cut to within an eighth-inch of the seamline on a quilt that's intended for the wall; stick with a quarter-inch if you plan to use and wash the quilt.  If all else fails, it's better to make several slits that stop at least an eighth-inch shy of the seamline than to make a few that go all the way in.

One last word about pressing: we all were brought up to think that pressing occurs on the ironing board.  But quilters would be better off using the ironing board for fabric storage, as I do, and making another surface to actually iron on.  That's because it's important to have your entire piece lie flat as you press.

As soon as your piecing outgrows your ironing board, you're only able to get part of it to lie flat, and then you have to shift it around.  What frequently happens is that each segment is indeed flat, but the whole thing isn't -- just as you are able to press a garment in flat segments, even though the whole dress curves to fit your body.

So make yourself an ironing surface on your work table or a countertop or even on the floor.  You don't need fancy metallic ironing-board cloth; an old mattress pad, wool blanket or two thicknesses of a towel will do very nicely.

Quiltmaking 101 -- Pressing -- the non-negotiable essential

Perhaps you have heard of the quilt police.  So have I, but I'm not afraid to get pulled over; in fact, 99% of the stuff the quilt police worry about, I don't, and you shouldn't either.  Don't care if your seam allowance is a quarter-inch, don't even care if it's uniform, as long as the seam is straight.  Don't care if your "straight edges" are ruler-straight or freehand.  Don't care if your blocks aren't the same size.  Don't care if your corners are exactly 90 degrees.  Don't care if the sides of the quilt are straight or curved.  Don't care if your backing coordinates with the front of the quilt.  Don't care if you run out of a given color before the quilt is done (it probably will be more interesting if you sub in something else).  Don't care if your mitered bindings are sewed shut at the corners.

There's only one thing that I obsess over when it comes to the technical construction aspects of quiltmaking, and that's pressing.

If you're going to have a devil-may-care approach to so many other aspects of quilting, it helps to have the quilt lie perfectly flat and smooth.  Otherwise you end up with something that may look glorious from across the room, but from up close looks like you sewed it in a closet on a toy machine with the lights out and work gloves on.  That's a look I want none of.

Here's a before-and-after example from a workshop I taught.

Before: the student pressed her strips the way she usually did.

After:  the strips have been pressed obsessively.  Which one looks better?  And a well-pressed seam makes it much easier to sew all the subsequent seams that will cross it.

Here's you can become a master of the iron.

First, make a pressing surface on a table or counter rather than using an ironing board.  A large ironing surface means the entire expanse of the piecing can be pressed flat, not just a segment of it.  Ideally your ironing surface would be as big as the finished quilt, but in interim stages of construction that's not necessary.

I set up a small ironing station next to my sewing machine so I can press blocks in process without getting up.  Two or four thicknesses of a towel make a fine surface.

Ironing boards are made long and skinny precisely because you can get small areas of a three-dimensional garment to lie flat long enough to be pressed.  But when the garment leaves the ironing board, it reverts to its original rounded shape, suitable to fit your bust or your butt.  Similarly, a quilt can lie perfectly flat on the narrow board -- or at least a small portion of it lies flat -- but actually be wavy and bulgy when you try to smooth the whole thing out on a wide surface.

Before we get to specifics, a general rule: quilt seams should be pressed toward one side or the other, not pressed open as in garment construction.  The problem with open seams is that if they're subjected to any pulling, they will separate, leaving ugly gaps between the threads and allowing the batting to show and perhaps escape.  By contrast, if the seam is pressed to one side and pulls open, you'll just see the bottom seam allowance, not the batting.

A second reason to avoid pressing seams open is to make your quilting easier.  Many times you want to stitch in the ditch -- that is, put your sewing line as close as possible to the seam, on the downhill side.  But if the seam is pressed open, there's no downhill side; both sides are at the same height.  It's harder to place your stitches, and if you accidentally sew into the center of the seam, you aren't really holding the fabric to the bottom layers, you're just catching the threads.  That makes your quilt much less sturdy and secure.  So unless you have a really good reason not to, press both allowances to one side.

Issue 1: pressing the block

The rule of thumb is to press every seam before you cross it with another.  Depending on your design, you may have to do that immediately, but in some quilt blocks, such as Rail Fence, with several parallel seams, you can sew the entire block together before you need to press.

Unless I have really light-colored fabric sewed to really dark, where show-through on the front side of the quilt would be a problem, I prefer to press all parallel seams in the same direction rather than point them individually toward the darker side.  It makes pressing easier, and can also make sewing easier as you start joining blocks into larger expanses.

If you have some places where a very light rail is next to a very dark one, and you must press toward the light, check to  make sure there is no see-through on the front.  You can trim off a millimeter of the dark fabric if necessary so it doesn't peek out from behind the light seam allowance.

Place your block face down so the seam allowances are visible.  Swipe your iron gently over the seams, just enough to make them all point in the same direction.  At least half of the iron's weight is still supported by your hand, not weighing down on the fabric.  You don't want to put an actual press into the fabric yet; wait till you get it right side up and can see what you're doing.

Flip the block so the right side is up and the seams (or seam) are vertical.  If you're righthanded, point the seam allowances toward the left.  Feel the seams to be sure the allowances are still pointing as they should.  You will  note that at each seam, there's a "downhill side" close to the iron, with only one thickness of fabric, and an "uphill" on the far side with three thicknesses.  The panel steps up a bit at each seam, kind of like a staircase.

Place your iron on the right-hand strip, NOT touching the seam yet.  Move the iron to the left across the seam, using the side of the iron as a bulldozer to push the fabric away from the iron as you move onto the second strip.  You will notice a bubble of fabric moving ahead of the iron -- that's the extra fabric released as the iron opens the seam farther.

After you've nudged the bubble out the far side and everything seems flat, go back and press the entire panel leisurely.  Let the full weight of the iron rest on the seams as you move it slowly across the fabric.  Inspect each seam: if it isn't entirely open, give it a spritz of water from a spray bottle to relax it and press again.

If a seam has opened too far, so that you see dots of thread, spritz it and press again, a little less enthusiastically this time to close the seam a hair.

If a seam hasn't opened far enough, so that there's a pleat on the front side, spritz it and press it farther open.

Finally, turn the block over and check the back side to be sure no seams have flipped in the wrong direction.  If they have, spritz and correct the mistake.

Issue 2: pressing the seams between blocks

You've sewed two blocks together and need to press the seam, but in which direction?  Unfortunately there's no simple rule.  Instead, here are some considerations.  Think about all of them and try to find the best answer.  Sometimes one consideration argues for pressing toward the left, and another argues for pressing toward the right.  You decide which one trumps the other.

Consider these points:

-- Press toward the darker fabric to avoid show-through on the front side of the quilt.

-- Press toward the side with the fewest intersecting seams, to minimize the number of fat bumps where the seam allowances fold back and pile up on top of themselves.

-- Anticipate how this seam will relate to the corresponding seam on neighboring blocks.  If the seams are to align at the corners, it helps to have them pointing in opposite directions.  That is, where four blocks come together, one of the seams will point northward and the other will point southward.  This way the bulk of the seam allowances doesn't pile up and make a huge bump at the corner.

In some cases it's hard to decide, but don't obsess over it.  Even if seam allowances pile up on each other, on a problem scale of one to ten this isn't even a two.  Press it one way or the other, and move on.  Just check carefully on the front of the quilt, and if the seam is too bulky, give it an extra spritz and press twice.

Issue 3: Pressing the seams between larger modules

Toward the end of the construction process, you will be sewing long seams, with multiple blocks on each side.  The decision of which way to press the seam is like that in Issue 2, except there are so many more places where the considerations contradict one another.

The simplest solution is just to press all the seams in the same direction.  Sure, some intersections will be a bit bulkier than others, but don't worry about it.

I'm saved

In late July I taught a quilting workshop and brought two huge bags full of fabric, equipment and miscellaneous stuff.  As I left on the last afternoon, laden down with mysteriously more stuff than I had brought, I made a terrible mistake -- I left my spray bottle behind.

My spray bottle is a precious possession.  You might not think a quilter even needs a spray bottle, what with steam irons and all.  But I hate steam irons.  They spit nasty black crud onto your fabric every now and then, and after a particularly traumatic experience in a hotel room once where the crud ended up in the center of a white dress that I was about to wear to a fancy dinner, I swore I would never let that happen again.  For more than 40 years I have kept my irons in their virgin state, never putting a drop of water into their little innards.

As a result, I've never had any black crud spit upon on anything I've made.  But I have been dependent on my spray bottles to make up the difference.

You might not think it would be too hard to come up with a decent spray bottle.  They sell them everywhere, in case you can't just use a recycled bottle once the Windex or whatever is used up.  But in my experience spray bottles are surprisingly temperamental; they "spray" wimpy droops of water, or they require too much hand strength, or they refuse to spray at all.  Over the years I've had some spray bottles that I loved, but somehow they disappear and I have to search for the perfect replacement.

My wonderful spray bottle, inadvertently left behind, was one of the better ones.  It used to hold Glass Plus.  A dear friend gave it to me, empty, several years ago and I've treasured it.  It's big, so refills last a while, and the spray action is sufficiently leveraged that I can spray-dampen an entire quilt pinned up on the wall without having to switch hands or take a break.  It's been shlepped with me to workshops in several cities and always done me proud.

But now it was gone.  Going back to fetch it seemed like a big production, not only in miles but because I would need somebody else to come with me to unlock the work room.  That seemed like an excessive response for a piece of plastic that had cost nothing to begin with and surely would be replaceable.

So I looked around the house for another spray bottle.  I found one, washed it out and filled it, but it wouldn't spray.  I repeated the whole process, and this one wouldn't spray either.  I repeated the whole process, and the third one sort of sprayed, but did a bad job of it.  I was in a fabric store and irons were on sale, so I bought one, and put water into it for steam!!!  The first time in four decades.  It didn't seem to work up enough heat for the steam to properly press my piecing, so that I was dampening the seams with a wet washcloth for extra oomph.  And best of all, a week after I bought it -- wait for it -- it spit black crud onto a class sample I was about to take with me to a workshop.

I was between quilting projects and the lack of a decent ironing system led me to spend weeks working on paper rather than starting a new fabric project.  But finally there's good news.  A month later I went back for another workshop in the same studio, and the bottle was there, in the same corner where I had left it a month earlier. 

I'm in heaven!  I can iron again!  If I can find the sales slip for the new iron, it's going back to the store; if I can't, I'll hope it will dry out and live a productive life, never again to let the demon rum pass its lips.