Hanging Sleeve video

I've received such a lot of positive feedback about my hand piecing videos - thank you to everyone who has sent me messages of support.

Many of you asked for more videos on a range of topics, but I decided to cover hanging sleeves first.

Hanging sleeves aren't just for exhibition quilts - they allow you to hang quilts in your home too.

My Holiday Homies quilt hanging above the spare bed

I belong to Capital Quilters guild, and we have our exhibition coming up in August 2020.  I was going to give a little talk about hanging sleeves at our next guild meeting, but New Zealand is now in a 4 week lock down for Corona Virus, so that isn't going to happen.

So I made a video instead, and here it is:

I use Jacqui Geering's method for making 4" deep hanging sleeves, and that's the method I demonstrate in my video.   You can find the written instructions on Jaqui's blog here.

Some of the important things I cover in the video are:
- when and how to leave room for a hook in the centre of your quilt
- where to position the hanging sleeve on the back of the quilt
- how wide to cut the fabric for the sleeve (it's 8 1/2")

So I hope you find it useful.  My regular cameraman was away, so I had to train another one.  This video won't win any prizes, but apparently my audience prefer the rustic homemade style anyway!

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been up to?  Feel free to link up a recent blog post and let us know what you've been up to.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Hand Piecing 101 video

Guess what! I made a video.

A number of people have asked me about hand piecing recently so I made a video.  It's just a little home movie - nothing flash - but I think it covers all you need to know.

It's interesting that when I grew up in the 1980's in New Zealand my mum taught me how to English Paper Piece with hexagons.  It was a relaxing way to hand sew fabrics together.

But when I met Willyne Hammerstein from the Netherlands, she said that people in Europe grew up hand piecing, and they didn't understand why we insisted on wrapping fabric around papers (English Paper Piecing).

Now more and more of us who grew up English Paper Piecing are wanting to try hand piecing.  We realise that English Paper Piecing large quilts is hard on our hands and we think hand piecing will be gentler.   I've certainly enjoyed hand piecing the three large quilts I've made to date:

Glitter - designed by Jen Kingwell of Amitie Textiles

Bella Ruby pattern by Emma Di Stefano of Tree House Textiles

Pieces of the Past designed by Wendy Whellum of Legend and Lace

So, my little video will show you how I hand piece.  The actual stitching starts at 10:30 if you want to jump ahead to the sewing part.

I hope you find it useful.  If you have comments or questions just leave a comment below or on the video, or send me an email via the box on the right hand side of my blog.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been up to this week?  I've been glued to the Australian Open tennis on TV, but I have been doing quilting while I've been watching.  Feel free to share a recent blog post below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter