How to HAND-TIE Your Quilt AT HOME With Matt and Donna!

Hi, I'm Donna Jordan from Jordan Fabrics, let me show you something, this is one of my UFO containers. Now a UFO is an unfinished object, so these are

quilt

s that I haven't finished yet and if you've been

quilt

ing for a while. Chances are, once you get some of these you'll really want to finish them, so today I'm going to show you a good method to finish

your

quilt at

home

without sending it to the long weave without any special tools. I show you how to

hand

-tie a quilt with thread, so now I make all my quilts on the quilting machine.

We have all these seams. This quilt here was made by making individual stitches with thread and tying them by

hand

. Now it's not just for looks. It is not decorative, these are useful and functional comforters that you can sleep on and wash them. We used them with my four children when they were little and they are very fluffy and very comfortable. This is the UFO I would most like to finish. a pattern called all over the world and I must have made it maybe 20 years ago. These fabrics are from rural Concord flowers. Concord fabrics are no longer in business, but during the 80's and 90's when I had big, nice permed hair, these were prints we used. for quilting so if you've been quilting for a long time you probably recognize some of these prints so these color cards are what they would send us so we could order fabric and we ordered a lot of them so these prints here are actually In the quilt that I'm going to show you how to hand tie today, the first thing we're going to need is a backing, so I'm going to use this cute navy print here now my quilt is 81 inches square and My fabrics are about 43 44 inches wide so two widths will give me enough to get my 81 this way so for the length I'm going to cut it around 86 inches so I have a couple extra inches on the top and bottom . so I'm going to cut it into 86 inch long pieces.

I've got my two lengths right sides together here and all I'm going to do is make a big, long seam here. I'm going to use about an inch and a quarter seam. a margin to make sure we get past this nasty part of the selvedge, now we're going to want to press this seam open and I'm just going to press it with my fingers to run it back through my machine here and then. I'll open it up and just run my nail or the tip of my finger down the seam, it'll be nice and flat. Now we're going to take the back and place this right side up on a Here's a big new table, so I'm going to spread it out nice and flat.

Now we are going to bring the top right sides together at the top of the back, so you need to be a little careful when doing this. Don't wrinkle

your

back, so carefully turn it over and straighten the top keeping that back nice and flat once you've got it nice and flat. I'm going to leave this whole side alone. IM not going to do it. anything on this side except these other three sides, so from here along the bottom and all the way to the other side, I'm going to pin around the edges about every six inches to pin it about half an inch all the way around. path. around these three sides now we're going to take all of this to the sewing machine, we're going to sew around those three sides that we pinned, so starting here, I'm going to sew backwards so this doesn't come out. aside and I'm going to use about a 3/8 inch seam allowance here and I'm just going to go all the way around.

I'm on the last of the three sides here, so I'm going to go to the end and the backpack now on this fourth side here this side here I'm going to take this I'm going to start at the other end and I'm going to sew all the way here to make sure none of these little seams come apart, these little seams here come apart as we work with the quilt, so I'm going to sew, it's called a set seam and now I'm going to go 3/8 of an inch from the edge to quilt the quilt . 100% polyester batting and is bonded, meaning it has been heat treated on both sides so it won't fall apart.

It will stay together inside the quilt, even if you tie it every few inches, it will stay together during washing and it's very very durable, so I bought this at Joanne's and you can find it at most craft stores. Just get a nice fluffy one. Now I have a 48 inch batting. You probably won't be able to find it as wide as you need if you're making a large quilt, so we're going to have to look at this together, so let me show you how it's done. I have two lengths and I'm going to place them on top of each other, now we're going to sew along the edge. here we're going to sew this by hand, so I have a medium size needle here and I'm going to use red thread so you can see what I'm doing.

I'm just going to use one piece of thread, so I'm going to start with a couple of stitches here and pull it through and have a big knot on the end. Now I'm going to take one point every inch. Here you can make two or three points. a cover stitch and then just pass it through. I don't know if you can see me doing it, but don't make it too tight, just sew it pretty loosely, so keep going until you don't have much thread left and Look, I'm just using one layer of thread, it's just folded over here and when you get to where you almost you will be out of thread, you can simply remove it from the needle, tighten it a little and twist it around your finger. and then roll it down and make a big knot like that, then thread it again and finish the rest of the sewing.

Now we're going to open this up to have a layer and we're going to lay it down nice and flat. our table here and let me show you why we didn't want the seams to be too tight where we put these two pieces of batting together. We want these two pieces to lay flat so you can see the seams but they don't stick out. and when making a crest, we don't want a crest, that's why we wanted it. Now we're going to put our quilt that's front to back on top of the batting, so I'm going to put the back side down so that the patchwork stays. up and I'm going to place this carefully to make sure my batting stays nice and flat.

Once it's securely in place, we're going to want to trim off the excess batting and backing and you can do it all. In one step, simply trim the batting on the backing to make it even with the edge of your patchwork quilt. We're going to do this on all three sides, the three sides we sewed from front to back, now I'm going to where the seam is here on my batting, so when you come up and look, if it looks like you're going to cut the seam there, you might You may have to re-tie that knot so the hand stitching doesn't come off, so just take a look. that looks like you cut it, you're not open, find a little bit of loose thread there, because you cut it and then you tie a new knot.

Now we're going to use the same hand stitching method on plaster that we used before when we batting stitched to bring all of these layers together, so I'm going to take stitches. I'm within the seam allowance here so you can see my seams where I sewed them from front to back. I'm going to sew here and my stitches. They will be a little closer every 3/4 inch and a little tighter and I will go around all three sides and this will anchor my batting to the edges of my quilt. I have it sewn. around the three sides and this last side is completely open now for the next step you really need to have two people so grab a friend.

I'm going to find my husband Matt. Hello everyone, I'm Matt. I hope you are enjoying this video. Back in the late '70s, Donna and I used to tie a lot of patchwork quilts and sell them in stores, so she's got this set up now and we're going to turn it over so we each take a hand and we're going to reach between the front and back here and we're going to go down to the other end all the way in and then we're going to grab a big handful of the quilt here with the hand that's inside there, we beat you, done, oh.

You have it now we are going to turn it over, we are going to take it out and we are going to turn it over, so now we are going to shake it and we are going to continue flattening the sides that we have to do. Reach back in to get these corners out once you have the quilt nice and flat you're ready to start tying it up so I'm going to use red heart thread. This is an acrylic yarn. It's a nice high quality yarn, but it's available almost everywhere. We're going to use these Darner yarn needles.

Matt likes to use the bigger one. I will use the medium ones as a

matt

er of preference, but you need a fairly large needle to be able to get that thread through the quilt. I took the larger needle here and the way I thread it is by stretching the thread through the needle, pinching it with my fingers and then pulling it back up through the needle just like that and I haven't done that in about 20 years. but that was pretty good and then I do three pulls of thread one two three perfect now before we start we want to protect our table we don't want to damage our table with the needle we also don't want it to splinter on our quilt so I'm going to grab a cutting board here and I have it upside down so as not to damage the surface of the cutting board and I'm going to put it right here under the area where we are I'm going to quilt the first thing I'm going to do now with this quilt is take a look at the pattern and decide where I'm going to put my ties on.

I like, as a general rule, not to have the threads further away. about six inches apart, which allows you to keep the cold very strong and at the same time show that puffiness that you like to show when you use a tall batting, so for this quilt we will do it every two patches which will give us about six inches of Of course, your quilt will probably be different and you can choose something that looks good. I'm going to do my stitching on each square here, but you could, in fact, I could tie this quilt right in the center of these squares if you wanted.

Because they are square, I decided to go through these seams. It shows the pattern better and that's the only reason there is no exact way to tie it. You can put your bows anywhere you want, as little or as light as you want. I'm going to start with time as I think about making this weave. I want to get as close as possible to this seam where all these fabrics come together without going into the seam because that would be very difficult to do, so I'm I'm going to go out about a quarter of an inch.

I'm going to press down, touch the table, come back down. the other side, I went into the other square, it's diagonal, I'm going to pull the thread out now I'm going to use one finger to hold the thread down as I pull the thread through, I'm just pulling and holding with this finger down, that's all I'm doing and I'm leaving about three inches here that I'm going to tie with later, then I'm going to go and skip a roll, which I decided to do in my pattern and I'm going to hit the next diagonal here once again a quarter of an inch to the table.

I touch the table and bring it in, as you can see, the needle comes out about a quarter of an inch, maybe a little more, no. It really

matt

ers, I'm going to tie the quilt here like this. I got to the end of my thread and I didn't get to the end of where my pattern is going to be, but that's okay, all I'm going to do is trim it off about three inches and rethread my needle. A good tip is that you don't have to cut the thread or yarn to move to the next row.

It will help you, you can be much faster and I have an odd amount. of squares here, so I'm going to come in a block here. I'm just going to continue with the same thread in the second row that is in the first, it's not like that and now I will discontinue in this row putting loops to We have gone up three rows and it is very comfortable for us to reach it, so the next step is to trim the threads, so make sure to keep the tip of the scissors facing up because you don't want to trim the quilt.

I'm just cutting between all of these points, our next step is to tie the threads, so I'm going to make the threads evenly distributed here, you can adjust that and I like to do what I call a shoelace, that is, along broad. When tying my shoes they come down tight and once again so once you have all the knots tied you can trim them so I like to trim the threads to about an inch it's not necessary you can leave them long if you want. like it's completely a matter of personal preference okay the last step we're going to do is put on a product called fray check.

We have used fray check over the years to make the knots very tight, meaning it is soaked in the fibers that this product soaks. in the fibers, dries quickly, dries clear and does not shed after multiple washes. It's been a great product for us, so this fray control prevents the fabric from fraying, so it seals in all the little fibers so they don't unravel. The entire quilting section is done here and all we are going to do is continue the same procedure to the quilt and then it will be all done, all the quilting and hand tying is done so now I just need to finish this last part here, so let me show you how to achieve a nice, neat finish.

I'm going to turn it over and I'm going to trim the batting so that it's even with the top of the Now I'm going to trim off the excess of the quilt, but I'm going to leave about an inch, maybe an inch and a quarter extra, now we want that this last opening is securely pinned before sewing and here is an easy way. The way to do it is to take the batting, whichit's layered here and just split it up, it doesn't have to be exactly perfect in the middle and then fold the back over that half of the batting and then smooth out the top and fold it over that half of the batting and pin it so keep going doing that all the way down the back over a little bit of batting and the top a little bit of batting and then it's going to look really nice on the edge here, it's going to be nice and even all we have to do now is take out the first pin and I'll hold it up. and I'm going to Sew very close to the edge here, so I'm going to go back and forth along the edge about an eighth of an inch away so the worship is finished and now you know a really quick and easy way to finish your projects without finish without having to send it to the long weave without having to stick all of this under your sewing machine to quilt it, look how nice it turned out, here's the last edge and the batting is sewn very securely in there, so it doesn't will come out of The sides of this batting were hand sewn, so it has a very nice finish around the quilt.

Thanks for watching our tutorial today. I hope you enjoyed. We are going to do one more thing today and that is to give away this beautiful quilt. Now to enter the giveaway for this hand tied quilt around the world it is very easy just click on the link below that says giveaway and enter your name and email address and remember this is open to everyone at all over the world, we can ship it to any happy place. padded