How to Knot and Bury Thread Ends When Quilting: Video

Here's a video of how I bury thread ends at the beginning or end of a line of stitching. I know one thing I do differently from other videos I've seen on knotting is where I tie my knot. I like to do it about 1/2 inch away from my top instead of right at the surface. It works for me.

And below is what this area looked like before I started burying ends.

When doing an intricate bit of stitching with a lot of starts and stops, I like to minimize how many times I have to cut thread and start over. I will lift the needle out at the end of a line of stitching, and using my knee lift, raise the presser foot and move to an area out of the way of more stitching. Then I take a single stitch and then move to the next area of stitching, leaving a 'V' of thread. This allows me to move to a new area and still keep the start and stop tails of thread out of the way.

When my quilt starts to look like the first picture, above, with threads all over the place, it's time to take care of all the knotting and burying. As I show in the picture below, I pull on that 'V' of thread where I took the single stitch and pull the bobbin thread up to the top. (The black thread on my finger is the bobbin thread.)

Then I cut the bobbin thread and proceed to tie the ends as shown in the video. By keeping those threads intact and located in an area I'm not currently stitching in, I keep from accidentally sewing over the bobbin thread tails while I 'save' the knotting and burying for later.

Now, I am off to quilt some more on this project. I swear the next project I do will be more cheerful!

Video: Quilted Christmas Lights

I finally got the video uploaded and edited from my Quilted Christmas Lights project, which I blogged about last week. Hope you like it! As I mentioned in the post, it also features the voices of my children in the background along with me using my Super-Mommy voice.

Pinny Inspiration

Source: kindredquilts.blogspot.ca via Made With Hugs on Pinteres

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Source: hollyshobbiestn.weebly.com via Lori on Pinterest

Quilted Lights Made from Kids' Fingerprints

 I realize Christmas has come and gone a while ago, but I thought I'd share this simple table topper with you. I didn't actually get it done in time for Christmas, but the important thing is that this is a memory maker for us. The light bulbs are actually made from my children's thumb prints.

I fused some Wonder Under 805 to the back of some white cotton fabric and then used Pebeo Setacolor paints and also Lumiere metallic paint for the yellowish green 'light' (My daughter loves a little bling.) I carefully made thumbprints with each child and then when they dried, cut the 'bulbs' out and fused them onto the background fabric.

 

A little fun quilting in Superiors' thick #30/3 poly once called New Brytes and now renamed Sew Fine 30, to make the thumb prints into a string of lights and to quilt the year on to it. Then a little glitter to stitch the bulbs down and do a little quilting in the background. I tried to make it look like flashes of light around the bulbs.

I also used a decorative stitch around the edge since I used the pillowcase method to finish the edges instead of a binding.

I had forgotten I had made a video of  me doing some of the quilting and found it when I loaded these pics onto the blog. I'll see if I can't get it posted soon. The kids' quiet time finished up just as I was video taping, so there are some guest voices on it. [Edited to add: Video post here: Video: Quilted Christmas Lights]

Now, back to quilting!