What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Did you know that January is National Organization Month? The new year is prime time to embrace a fresh start by organizing your craft stash. Today we’re sharing our favorite organization tools with you!

Let’s jump right in and take control of your craft corner! As quilters and stitchers, we know an organized sewing space can be a source of inspiration. Below we’ve gathered our favorite organizational tools into three categories, general, cross stitch, and quilting to make it easy for you to find what’s best for your space!

General Sewing Organization

The Oh…Sew! Organized ...

Every quilter knows that pressing and ironing is a big part of the quilt-making process! Pressing fabric and quilt blocks makes for a more accurate and polished result. Today on the blog we’re sharing some tips for pressing quilt seams and a BIG giveaway of ironMATIK ironing boards and mats!

Ironing vs. Pressing

How are ironing and pressing different? The main difference is in how you move the iron across the fabric. Ironing is the familiar motion of sliding your iron over the fabric to remove wrinkles and creasing. Whereas, pressing is appropriately named because it’s done by ...

Pin cushions are a useful and thoughtful gift for quilters, and they make a nice addition to your sewing space! They’re also a cute, fun DIY project. Today, we’re sharing an easy pin cushion tutorial that’s a quick last-minute gift or a fun project for any skill level.

Pin Cushion Supplies

• Planter Pot (we used these matte cat planter pots from Amazon)
• Fabric (we used some scraps of Spotted by Zen Chic for Moda Fabrics starting with about a quarter of a yard)
• Poly-Fil (we used a 3oz bag for our set of six)
• Thread (any color ...

If you’re looking for an eye-catching way to organize your sewing supplies, look no further than this DIY tray! This beautiful quilt block tray serves as a catch-all to keep your essential sewing supplies in one convenient place. Follow the step-by-step tutorial below to make one of your own!

This delightful project is practical and a great way to put your extra quilt blocks to good use. Whether you’re a seasoned quilter or just looking to add a touch of handmade flair to your sewing room, you can join us as we transform a few simple materials into ...

Quilt backs or backing! It’s a hot topic around here. We often receive questions about preparing quilt backing fabric, such as cutting and assembly techniques, working with 108” wide fabric, pieced backings, and how to make the backings ready for a longarmer.

Over the years, we’ve come to find a few techniques to use for our quilt backs, and we’re sharing them with you here today, along with a FREE Quilt Backing Reference Chart that gives you quilt piecing diagrams at a glance, along with some helpful tips.

Top 3 Quilt Backing Tips

To find out some ...

Today we’re stepping into the world of quilting with flannel fabrics and taking you with us! We’re sharing our top five tips for sewing with flannel and a new free shortcut quilt pattern below. Be sure to read to the bottom so you don’t miss the video tutorial or an exciting new giveaway!

Top 5 Flannel Quilting Tips

While flannel is different than quilting cotton, it isn’t too tricky and beginners can definitely use it. We’ve gathered a few of our best tips for working with it below.

1. Always Pre-wash Flannel

Unlike when working ...

Echoed Swirls are my new favorite free motion quilting stitch!

The stitch is exactly like it sounds, a swirl with one or two echoes around it. But this simple stitch really elevates the look of the swirl, making any quilt you use it on look super fancy.

Usually I use it as a background filler, so this is the first time I’ve used is as a allover design and I absolutely love it! The texture it creates is amazing and really made my Pixelated Blooms quilt look beautiful.

In this video I show you how to stitch the allover ...

Are you looking for a creative way to display your quilt? A hanging quilt sleeve is the perfect solution! This simple DIY project will transform your quilt into a wall hanging and can easily be completed in an afternoon.

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to add a quilt sleeve to your quilt so you can proudly display it on your wall. Let’s get started!

Supplies & Cutting

We’re making a quilt sleeve that will be about 4” tall. It’s suitable for most quilts, but if you plan to use this for a quilt show ...

There’s nothing better than an easy pattern that looks complicated. That‘s what you get with 18 Carat Revisited.

The blocks for this quilt are created by slicing up half square triangles to create the angled strips that make up the spiky block design.

This pattern is a re-imagined version of 18 Carat, which creates the same block using a 10-inch square pack.

18 Carat Revisited has been resized to use up just about every inch of a fat quarter, so it’s a thrifty way to bust your stash or use up your favorite fat quarter bundle.

I ...

Have you finished a quilt top recently? It’s time to decide if you’re going to quilt it on your home machine or send it off to a longarm quilter. In this blog post, we’ll provide five tips for preparing your quilt top to send to a longarm quilter. By following a few simple guidelines, you’ll be set up for success (and a long and happy relationship with your longarmer!).

A view of two longarm quilting machines in Gina Tell’s studio.

5 Tips for Sending Your Quilt to a Longarm Quilter

Longarm quilting services can elevate ...

***The full 1-hour, 28-minute COMMERCIAL-FREE course on how to quilt Cosmos is available here: https://academy.quiltaddictsanonymous.com/course/quilting-a-pebble-background-filler-and-rulerwork-cosmos/

When I took on the task of quilting Cosmos, designed by Stephanie Brennan using my fabric collection Nocturne, I knew it needed to be epic.

I chose separate quilting designs for each border, all three blocks and background. I chose an organic pebble background filler and then used sharp lines of rulerwork for the rest of the quilt to make the design elements of the blocks and borders stand out from the background.

We have two versions of this quilting ...

I had exactly one day to quilt Celestial, our latest Stashin’ with Stephanie quilt. So I needed a quilting design that was both fast, and would do justice to the spectacular diamonds throughout the quilt. I ended up with something I lovingly called the Wavy Line Special.

I followed the shape of the diamonds to quilt five wavy lines inside of each diamond in the quilt blocks, and seven inside each of the background diamonds. It was super fast and easy with just a little bit of rulerwork to travel in the diamonds.

The result was being able to quilt ...

Singularity, our latest Stashin’ with Stephanie quilt design, featured large sections of negative space that were just begging for some fun quilting.

I know that negative space can sometimes be intimidating because as a quilter we feel pressure to do something super fancy in it. But I chose echoed swirls to fill the space with a fun, modern texture that looks great but wasn’t too difficult.

I love using quilting stitches that are very different in the background versus the piecing to help separate the two spaces. So I chose some simple rulerwork in the triangles to help accent ...

Quilting with Rulers 5-Pack Kit: I am so excited to announce Intro to Rulerwork, a new course we have coming on May 2!

I lover rulerwork because it makes me look like a much better quilter than I am. You just need to learn how to keep your ruler foot in contact with your special quilting ruler at all times and you can recreate any shape perfectly every time.

In this 23-video series for both the longarm and domestic sewing machine, we will use five different rulers to teach you how to stitch-in-the-ditch, create perfectly straight lines, quilt arcs, circles ...

Choosing fabric can be one of the hardest parts of the quilting process.

Often when we choose a pattern, it’s because we love everything about it, including the original fabric that often is no longer available.

So in today’s video I have Bobby Metcalf as my guest. He’s our newest Quilt Addicts Anonymous team member who we brought on to help us with creating content, but he has ZERO quilting background.

We worked together to pull fabric for a quilt on his bucket list, Ultraviolet using just what is available in our current remnant section.

I take ...

When you get started quilting the amount of supplies you need can be overwhelming. So for today’s video I break down the nine supplies you absolutely need to get started, and the nine you don’t.

The catch is, the nine supplies are the same item, at different price points.

I go over what kind of sewing machine you need, and two upgrade price points that you don’t need to start, but can be nice if you decide you can’t live without quilting.

I also go over what you absolutely need for fabric, thread, rotary cutters, mats ...

I love using Full Line Stencils to create quilting designs that I either can’t freehand or to help create consistently sized and spaced out motifs. We get both in today’s quilting tutorial featuring the Heart Border Stencil from Full Line Stencil.

I show you how to plan your border out, mark it and make sure the corner also looks fabulous. Then we get into the quilting where you get to see me quilt in real time on my home sewing machine.

The Heart Border Stencil is perfectly sized to fit in 4-inch borders, which is a very common ...

Today we’re featuring five projects that are perfect for beginner quilters or experienced sewers looking for a fast project.

These are all great projects designed to improve your quilting skills while giving you a finished creation that doesn’t look super simple.

We’ve featured all of the products you can grab to make these below.

Split Nine Patch – FREE beginner Quilting class
Get the FREE pattern, course & 20% OFF Discount code: https://shop.quiltaddictsanonymous.com/product/split-nine-patch-free-beginner-quilting-video-series-pattern/
Shop our current Split Nine Patch Quilt Kits: https://shop.quiltaddictsanonymous.com/product-category/beginner-quilting/quilt-kits-beginner-quilting/?orderby=date

5-Hour Bed Quilt
This ...

Everybody always loves a blooper reel and I love showing you all that I only look like I have it all together through the magic of editing.

But, it’s not just me who needs a little help, as Courtney, our video editor and Stephanie B., who answers all of your questions, also mess up from time to time.

Enjoy some of our most recent screwups!

#shorts

I designed Zig Zag, our September 2022 Stashin’ with Stephanie pattern, to show off all of the Love Struck prints and separate the light values from the background for a clearly defined block.

This is the first time we’ve featured Paintbrush Studios for our Stashin’ with Stephanie collection. The colors are soft and calming and the abstract modern prints look great together. The fabric also feels very soft and silky. It is lovely to sew with.

Zig Zag is the perfect pattern to master half square triangles and of course I go in-depth on how to get your ...