February 3, 2014 Podcast
Guest: Kathleen Brown of Mountain Patchwork
Topics: embellishing quilts
She says: "On just about everything we do, we add a little touch of embroidery, and we try and keep it really simple: just a simple backstitch, simple lazy daisies for leaves and petals. We use little tiny buttons to embellish along our vines and little flowers and that kind of thing."
Guest: Ali Winston of a.squared.w
Topics: binding tips
She says: "I'm just a perfectionist. I machine bind, so I want the needle to catch the exact same amount on the binding, and it's like magic. You glue, because you can actually see what you're looking at on both sides. You glue and it stays, and maybe it stays there for a week until you get around to it."
Guest: Debbie Grifka of Esch House Quilts
Topics: machine quilting tips
She says: "I often used painter's tape. I don't put it all the way along the line, but I will put very small pieces along the line of stitching to keep me going straight-ish. Our eyes tend to make things look straight, as opposed to looking at every little wobble that's in there. The overall impression, especially after you wash a quilt, is that everything is straight even if it's not perfectly so."
Guest: Nancy Mahoney
Topics: fabric selection
She says: "Value is really relative. A light fabric next to a medium fabric, you can almost always tell which one is light. It's really those mediums, and when you place a medium next to one that's lighter, it may read as a medium or it may read as a dark, but that same fabric placed next to a dark fabric may read as a light. It's really your mediums that you're really trying to determine whether they're light or dark and that you have enough contrast between your fabrics."