Edge & Finishes Session 4: Edges with Embellishments & Funk
Heather ThomasDescription
This session is all about the bling and the funk. Heather demonstrates three finishing techniques that will really pump up the interest to the edge. Included are; Gathered Ribbon Edging, Single Fold Hand Beaded Binding and Ripped and Raw Edge Sectioned Binding.
This next edge or finish is a very, very ornate finish, very decorative and it's done by gathering or ruching a ribbon. You can also use strips of fabric to do this too, but the ribbons I really like because they tend to be glossy or silky or shiny and add even more interest. I also like to use ribbon, especially if I can find it hand-dyed or ombred so that one color moves into another color. This particular ribbon that I'm using is 5/8-inch wide, which is my favorite width to use with this technique. You could go up to about one-inch and you could go down to a 1/2-inch, but I wouldn't go any narrower than that. Or any wider than that. The 5/8 seems to be a really good thing, same with 3/4. If it gets too wide, it will overwhelm a small piece. This is a very small piece. If you are working on a bigger piece, let's say it's 36 inches square or so, you could get away with that wider ribbon and have a wider edge to it. This is a very, very simple technique. However, it's a very hard technique if you are a perfectionist, so please don't try to do it perfectly. Just do it and be happy with kind of the organic way that it ends up. What we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be stitching down the middle of this ribbon. And we're just gonna be using a regular standard straight stitch. But your machine is not usually happy stitching through one layer of fabric. So you kind of have to do some manhandling where you have to kind of pull that ribbon through your machine, it doesn't hurt your machine or anything like that. You don't have to worry about it, but it can damage the ribbon. So if it's a very, very sensitive, silky ribbon that falls apart easily, it's probably not a good option for this technique. When we're done, we're gonna take that length of ribbon and we're going to gather it up. We're gonna use the thread that we stitched through it and gather it up. To make that gathering easier, we're going to use a wider stitch length than we normally do. So before you get started, you want to make your stitch length wider on your machine. So that's the most important thing. So if you normally stitch at like a 2 or 2 1/2, you wanna go up to about a 3 1/2 or a 4, that's how wide those stitches are, or how long those stitches are, I'm sorry. And then what I do is I work with the ribbon all in about the same length. So I start with my ribbon all about 2 1/2 to 3 feet long. And I like them all to be the same length when I start, so when I gather them, I can gather them all to the same amount or same length. That means I have the same amount of gathering in each portion of ribbon. And it just makes it a lot easier to apply then. So this long piece of ribbon will become this short piece of gathered ribbon, okay? So after that's done, we're gonna then stitch it directly to the quilt. So I'm gonna show you how easy this is. And I'm going to just stitch up the middle of this piece. And I'm gonna put the ribbon underneath, you see? I don't even worry about ironing the ribbon flat or making sure that it's flat or anything like that. 'Cause it's just gonna get all gathered up anyway. And I'm gonna hold onto these tails because these tails are gonna help me pull that single layer of fabric out from underneath that foot. 'Cause otherwise, my foot kind of wants to just eat it all up. So I'm just gonna kind of hold that backside of the ribbon as I stitch. And I'm going to try to stitch down the middle of the ribbon as much as possible, but if I get off the center, that's okay too. If your ribbon has a front or a backside, it doesn't matter which side you stitch on. You see how it kind of pre-gathers itself up back there if I don't hold onto it? Now, I don't wanna stitch all the way past the end because what happens is, is that'll make my thread ends get all kind of tangled up together. So I'm only gonna stitch to the end and then stop. I'm gonna give myself some extra length in my threads. And I'm gonna go to the end that I started sewing on. And I'm gonna take that ribbon and tie a knot in it. And that's gonna keep those threads from coming loose. And then I'll just trim those threads. Now, from this other end, I'm gonna separate those two threads, the bobbin thread and the top thread. And I'm simply going to gently pull on one of them. And I'm gonna pull on it a little bit, and then move those gathers or ruches down the length of the ribbon. What I don't wanna do is break my thread 'cause if I break my thread, I have to un-sew the ribbon and resew the ribbon. So this is a very soft, slow motion. And once I've done my first piece and I'm happy with how close together the gathering is, then I'm going to measure every new piece against that first piece. Let me see, I've already got some sewn on, so I have these two pieces or three pieces that are the length they need to be. It doesn't matter where the gathers are because I can manipulate those gathers the whole time I'm working with the ribbon. What matters is that it's the right length. So it's a little long still. And it doesn't have to be the exact length. It just needs to be close to it. So that looks close to it. So now, I'm gonna take those two threads. I'm gonna clip this long one here. And I'm gonna tie them in a knot several times. And then I have my gathered piece to work with. I'll trim those threads away, there we go. All right. So now, we're gonna sew this onto the edge of the quilt. Now, this is where things can get a little bit messy? Not, not perfect. So again, perfectionists beware. I just wanna warn you 'cause, you know, when you're working with embellishments and when you're working with funky techniques, perfection isn't usually what you're looking for because then it looks too tight and it doesn't really suit the technique well. So sometimes we have to relax in our expectations of ourselves. When we turn to the back of this piece here, you're gonna see that I zigzagged or satin-stitched the edge. This is really not a satin stitch, it's a zigzag, but I did it three times. Satin-stitching tends to really warp the edge of pieces. And I don't like that. Whereas if I use a wider, spread apart zigzag, and do it multiple times, so I go around it once, and then I go around again, and I go around again, it doesn't distort the edge as much. But like a satin stitch, it kind of finishes that edge so I don't have a raw edge that's gonna have fibers coming off of it for the life of the quilt. But you can see that part of my ribbon hangs out along the edge. Does it hang out equally? No. I've got more ribbon hanging out here. Almost none here. Little, very little here, more here. That is part of this technique. It's just gonna be that way. If you are creating quilts for the judge, this may not be the edge for you. The judge may say, "Well, this is not put on there straight." And you would have to say, "Well, it's nearly impossible to put this on straight "'cause of the technique.' But it's a great way to just add some wonderfulness to the edge of the quilt. So I think it's worth it to play with non-perfection every once in a while. So now I'm gonna start here in this corner. I finished in a corner here, and I'm gonna start in that corner. And because of the way this ribbon is ombred, I don't wanna start here because I'm repeating that orange again. I wanna start in the opposite end and repeat this green. This is the end that I put the knot in and I'm not gonna use that portion. I'm gonna kind of flatten out just a tiny little bit here to start, and I'm gonna be putting it here in this corner. And I'm only gonna stitch in this corner a bit. And then I'm gonna kind of push those ruches up to where I've just stitched. And you'll see what I mean here in just a second. So I'm going to hold that tail, sort of position that, and I want it to be as flat as possible right there. Put my foot down. And make sure my thread is under my foot. Otherwise it just gets in my way. Okay, and now, I'm just gonna take a few little stitches, like so, so I just took like two little stitches. And then I'm gonna put my needle down, lift my foot up, and push those ruches in 'cause I don't want that area that's not ruched. So you see, I just push those ruches in there? Okay. And as I'm doing that, I'm also sort of flattening out the ribbon. And I'm gonna go ahead and stitch just right down the middle of that ribbon a bit. And it's gonna look like you're just really warping it and really messing it up. And when you get done, you go, "Oh, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing." So then I'm gonna hold the end of this ribbon now. And I'm gonna find, as you're looking at the ribbon here, when it's ruched up, you can see that it's hard to see where the stitch line is. What I'm trying to find is that stitch line. So I'm trying to push the ruches aside and find that stitch line, and kind of stitch back on that stitch line whenever possible. And I say whenever possible because sometimes it's so curled up on itself, it's really hard to get there. And if I can't get there, I can't get there, but that's my goal. And so sometimes I'll use a little sharp something or other to manipulate and I'll lift up my foot so I can see where I'm at. So I'm kind of pushing this little curl of ribbon over to find that middle seam. And I wanna do it so that I can get some continuous stitch line happening here. I don't wanna have to constantly lift that foot up and stop, and move, and stop, and move. So I'm just gonna hold that in place with my sharp, pointed scissors and stitch. I forgot to take my stitch length down. So make sure you take your stitch length back down to your regular stitch length. And you can see here that I've got my ruching or my gathers somewhat equally distributed along the length of the ribbon and that's kind of a goal. Okay, so stitch a little bit more. And so I'm just positioning, stitching, positioning, stitching. Is it futzy? It's a little futzy. But it's really cool, so who cares? And if I can't find that center, I'm not gonna worry about it. I'm just gonna kind of flatten out my ribbon a bit. And my goal is to keep it right on that edge. So I'm right on the edge of the quilt. You said I can just manipulate those gathers if I feel like it's getting too full in one area. And as I get close to the end, I wanna make sure that end is kind of straightened out. And I really don't care what's happening with that end because I'm gonna cover over it with the next length of ribbon. So I'm gonna stop, put my needle down so that I can lift my foot up, take my next length of ribbon. And again, I want this green color because I ended with the orange. And you're gonna see that I'm going to put this knot behind where I've already sewn. So behind my needle because I'm gonna cut it off later. So I'm gonna kind of take it here and put it so it's right there behind my needle, and put that foot down, and I'm gonna sew forward. And then I'm gonna so backwards. So I'm gonna knot off this new piece as I overlap them. So I'm gonna stitch forward until I hit that violet color. I'm gonna backstitch and stitch forward again. And then I'll go in a few minutes and I'll trim that away. So as I'm doing this, I'm gonna, again, put my gathers in so that they're somewhat evenly distributed. Try to find the center of my ribbon whenever possible as I'm sewing. Sometimes the whole ribbon will turn itself over and you'll realize that you have been stitching on one side and now you're stitching on the other side. And there's nothing wrong with that as long as your ribbon isn't very different on one side to how it is on the other. Mine's basically identical, so it doesn't matter. Lots of gathers here and not lots of gathers there. And I'm using a gray thread. If I used a colored thread on here, it would probably show on some of the colors, and not show on other colors. And I want it to show equally across the whole surface or disappear equally across the whole surface, one or the other. So for me, it's showing equally. I'm getting to the end of this piece now. And again, it's got that knot. I don't wanna sew to that knot because I'm gonna be cutting that off. I'm gonna cut it off first if it's my last knot. I'm gonna cut it off later if it's my first knot. So this knot's gonna stay on when I sew. This one doesn't have a knot so I'm lucky. I'm gonna stop with my needle down. Position this end so it overlaps the end of here. Put the foot down. Start sewing, make sure I backstitch. Okay, so I'm getting close to the end here, and I'm gonna get about an inch away from the end. Stop with my needle down. I'm gonna cut away so that I have about an extra 1/2-inch or so of my ribbon. Cut, try not to let it un-gather too much here at the end. I'm gonna take my little pointy scissors. And I'm gonna kind of ruche that in underneath there, gather it underneath there so that I don't have a raw edge showing and I don't have any loose flat ribbon so that everything's all gathered up. Hold it in place. You could pin it in place if you want to, but I'm just gonna hold it. And stitch all the way to the end. And then backstitch. And here is our wonderful, messy, ruched edge. I'm gonna come in here, and I'm just going to clip that flush. Come over here, clip that flush. It's cool because it's overlapped. It's got all those ruches in there. And I've got this wonderful, very textural, highly colored, very funky edge, a ruched or gathered ribbon finish to my quilt, very fun. All right, let's go on to our next technique. This next technique is a hand beading technique and it can be done in several different ways. And I kind of showed you one way earlier that it was done entirely by hand, but it can also be done partially by machine and partially by hand. So I'll show you the difference here real quick. This is done with a ribbon. In fact, it's the same width of ribbon and the same style of ribbon that I used in the last technique, the ruche technique. Here, I simply hand-stitched the ribbon to the back of the quilt, and then pulled it to the front, and hand-stitched it down, adding a bead with each stitch. And I'll show you that in a minute. And so to do this, I did two sides, and then I did two sides. And so this is done entirely by hand. Is this a really sturdy binding? No. I would never use this on a piece that's gonna be laundered. This is a great decorative binding to be used for any wall pieces. And so keep that in mind when you're deciding where you want to use it. What you're gonna need for this technique, and I'm gonna be showing you a single fold stitched on the back by machine technique, the same sort of finished product. What I've done is I have sewn ribbon, but this ribbon was quite a bit wider, this ribbon was an inch wide, on the back of my quilt. And then, I'm going to fold it over, and then, fold it over again to the front of the quilt so that it is very secure on the back. And then it's gonna be hand-stitched to the front. So it's quite a bit more secure than the previous one I just showed you. If you're using ribbon, again, use ribbon that is either 3/4 of an inch, 7/8 of an inch, or 1-inch wide. And make your seam allowance accordingly. So if you're using a wider ribbon, use a chunky 1/4-inch. If you're using a narrower ribbon like 3/4 of an inch, then use a scant 1/4-inch to sew it on with. Again, you're sewing on two ends, and then two ends. If you're gonna cut fabric instead of using ribbon, my suggestion is to cut your strips 7/8 of an inch. So I'm gonna go ahead and stitch this on. Now, I kind of top-stitched around the edge of the quilt before I did this just so all of my layers were kind of snug together, stitched on the binding. And now, I'm gonna hand-stitch on the beads. The beads I'm gonna be using here are seed beads. And the needle I'm going to be using is a straw needle. So here are the seed beads. This happens to be a little bit of plush felt. The thread that I'm using is called Nymo, N-Y-M-O. And it's a very, very strong nylon silamide. And the reason we use this is because glass beads are just exactly that, they're made from glass. And sometimes they have sharp edges that you can't really feel with your hands, but the thread can feel, and they can cut through cotton thread really quickly. So it's not a good thread to sew on beads with on any fabric or any piece of jewelry or anything like that. You wanna use Nymo. And this is bought at bead stores or stores that sell beads. So it can be craft stores too. So I've got my straw needle. And the reason I use a straw needle is because of the size and shape of the eye of the needle. So the eye of the needle on a lot of needles comes out and is wider and bigger than the needle. And then I can't get it through a bead. So you wanna make sure that you can get your bead over the eye of the needle. And so straw needles are great for that. A lot of people use straw needles for hand applique, so you already have them in your stash. So I'm gonna start here at the end. And I'm gonna go ahead and bring my needle through the back of my quilt. I've got a knot in my thread. And I'm going to grab the binding where I want it to lay from underneath here, and come all the way through to the top. So my thread is now on the top, through the outside of the binding. I'm going to pick up a bead, one bead on my needle. And I'm gonna go back through just the top and into the batting of the quilt, not all the way to the back. And I'm gonna bring the tip of my needle out where I want my next bead to be. And I'm gonna pull the whole thing all the way through and snug that first bead down on the surface. Grab another bead. Go back down right next to where I came out, push the tip of the needle through over the length, and come out where I want my next bead to be. And I'm just eyeballing this distance because it doesn't have to be perfect. What you're looking for is a distance of about an 1/8 of an inch to an 1/8 and a 1/2, I guess, I don't know, not quite a 1/4-inch apart. And as I'm doing this, I wanna make sure that I'm snugging this ribbon against that edge. Coming back out where I want that next bead to be, pulling down. Now, this ribbon has a raw, rough edge to it. So that's what you're seeing there is that raw, rough edge. It's not a torn fabric. It's a silk ribbon with a bias cut. So those edges are all kind of funky. And I just keep adding seed beads along the edge and stitching so that my stitch is hidden inside the layers and doesn't show on the back of the quilt. That's why I'm bearing my needle into that batting, and then coming back out, and not going all the way through the back of the quilt. And then I get this wonderful row of beads. I'll do a few more here. You could iron this in place if you wanted to first, but I find that it moves so much, it's not really worth doing the ironing. Go back down right next to where you came out, and then bring the tip of the needle out where you want your next bead to be. I know there are some tapes on the market that have 1/8-inch marks on them and 1/4-inch marks on them. And you can use those if you wanted to, but I think the tape just kind of gets in the way. And so you can see how easy it is to eyeball that space and that it doesn't really matter if it's perfect. When we look at this guy right here, the beads are not perfectly spaced there, but it still looks really, really cool. So this is a hand-beaded, hand-finished technique, really cool for a crazy quilt of this sort, but cool for lots of other things too, like a small applique piece or anything that already has embellishments on it and you wanna add a little extra bling to the edge. A hand-beaded, turned ribbon or fabric edge. I call this edge technique a ripped edge sectional binding, sectional because it's made from little, or formed from little sections that aren't sewn to each other. So it's not one continuous piece. But it's sewn on the back in a traditional way for a single fold binding. So it's nice and sturdy. Would this particular piece survive lots of laundering? Actually, it wouldn't really because this is metal here in the middle, and you really wouldn't wanna launder the metal. And it's silk on this outside here. And the silk has a lot of fray that wouldn't handle laundering very well. But without the metal and if I was using cotton, like I'll be doing in the sample, then its laundry ability is greater. Would I wash it once a month? Probably not. Could I wash it a couple of times in its lifetime? Absolutely, so again, I just want you to be informed with each of these techniques what their lifestyle, I guess you could say, is going to be, depending on how you finish that edge. So to show you how to do this, I'm working on this piece here. And I have these two sides. I've already added the ripped pieces here to these two sides. And so I'm working on these two ends here. And I have sewn these to the back of a quilt. And then, I've folded them over to the front. And when I'm done, I'm gonna top-stitch them down in place. And so that will be done after we finish these two edges. So I've got a whole bunch of pieces of fabric that I used in the quilt that I'm using here as the binding. And I have ripped one edge of the fabric, and then trimmed it using my rotary cutter on the other side. So what we have, this wonderful little piece of paper here tells you is that you're gonna rip one edge, and then you're gonna cut it to 7/8 of an inch wide. And then you can cut it or rip it into 3 to 4-inch segments. And so that's what we have here is those 3 to 4-inch segments. To rip a fabric, it's pretty simple. This is a great fabric that has a whole lot of fray happening on this one side. So I don't really want that side. It's a little too much fray. So I'm gonna come close to this cut edge and cut a little clip, and then I'm just going to rip that. And so this is going to be my frayed edge, and it's a pretty, pretty frayed edge too, like the other one. And then I would come in here with my rotary cutter and cut it so that's 7/8 of an inch wide. So don't be afraid to rip your fabrics. They're kind of cool. It makes this great fray. This is sewn from the back of the quilt and flipped to the front. So what I've done is I've just pinned down my four corners of the two sides I've already done, so that when I go to sew these on, that is already folded over and finished. So we're gonna be working from the backside here. And the only thing I need to keep in mind is that I have one more piece of this fuchsia that I plan on using. And I either wanna use it in here, or I wanna use it in here, but probably here, 'cause this has very little fuchsia, and this is fuchsia here and fuchsia there. So I gonna probably put it somewhere in the middle of this side. So I just need to remember that as I'm working. And I'm gonna use a 1/4-inch seam, just like I normally would. And I'm just gonna vary the fabrics. Now, these fabrics are all hand-dyed, so don't have to worry about, you know, what, if I'm putting the right-side up or wrong-side up or right-side down or anything, but what you're gonna be doing is you're gonna lay them wrong-side down and flip 'em over so the right-side shows. And you also wanna make sure that you are sewing on the cut side so that the frayed side is what gets pushed over to the front. So make sure that you line up the raw cut side with the raw edge of the quilt. And I'm gonna sew with a scant 1/4-inch. And I am gonna backstitch here, just here at the beginning. And when I get about, oh, a 1/2-inch away from, or maybe a 3/4 of an inch away from the end of that fabric, I'm gonna grab another fabric and I'm going to overlap the two. So I'm gonna overlap them by about a 1/4 of an inch, maybe a little bit more, and then just keep sewing. My next fabric is going to be that red-violet. If I can find it. If I can't find it, I won't worry about it, there it is. So remember that you must overlap these by about a 1/4 of an inch, a little bit more if you want, but not a whole lot less. I'm just kind of paying attention so that, 'cause these fabrics have just a slight variation to them. So that I'm using a different fabric each time. And this one's a little long, but not quite long enough to get all the way to the end. And so I don't want a really, really short piece there. So I'm just gonna cut this one off a little shorter. And then do one final dark blue here. And make sure that you back backstitch. Okay, so this whole side is done. And we'll do our remaining side over here. And remember that you need to have those two ends pinned down in place. And remember to backstitch at the beginning and the end. And this piece is luckily long enough, but not too long. And I'm gonna make sure I backstitch again at the end. Okay. So now, we're going to pull up our iron and our ironing surface. And we're gonna go ahead and give this a press because it's a little easier to do the top-stitching if we've got a crisp corner to it or a crisp edge to that fold. Take my pins out that were holding these ends in place. And I'm gonna press first from the back, and simply press these over. The iron isn't all that hot yet, but it will get hotter as we go here. And then we'll fold them over to the front, like so. And we just want to make sure that we get the kind of the corner here somewhat even. Again, because this is so raw-edged, this is not a perfectionist binding. See, I kind of flip that over there? But luckily this piece of fabric is long enough not to have to worry about that. That has just folded under, so I wanna fix it. Some fabrics really are easy to get a crisp fold to, and others just battle with you. And we're gonna be top-stitching this entirely by machine. I'm just gonna iron these just a little better so that they're staying in place for me When I start doing my top-stitching. And I'm gonna go ahead and top-stitch. I could use a decorative color. I could use the red-violet, but I really don't wanna draw so much attention to this edge that it becomes all about the edge. So I'm gonna go ahead and use this gray thread. It's gonna show equally over the red-violet and the blue. Now we're finally getting some really good heat out of this iron. And I'm gonna give this side a final, and we're ready to do our top-stitching. So just keep in mind that you're gonna be able to see that top-stitching. That's why it's called top-stitching. It's sewn on top of everything. So choose your thread color accordingly. All righty. I'm going to be using a 1/4-inch seam on here. So I'll be working a 1/4-inch away from the fold. It doesn't really matter where you start. You're just gonna double over when you get there anyway. And I'm just gonna stitch all the way around. I'm gonna pay attention when I go onto a new piece of fabric so that I don't double it over or get any fullness there. You see that I am not pinning anything in place, I'm just holding things in place as I get there. And the really only important portion about making sure things are in a really good spot is when I get to the corner. So if I get to the corner and I have any fullness anywhere along the line, I'm gonna pull that fullness in there. And then I will go ahead and place a pin. And I wanna, I can do one of two things. I can stitch all the way to the edge, knot off and then start on the edge and crossover again. Or I can simply turn a corner. And so I'm gonna try to end a 1/4 of an inch away from the edge here so I can simply turn that corner. And one more stitch and I should be right there at the corner, and there we are. So I'm gonna go ahead and just stitch a little bit more here so you can see what this looks like stitched down. And then I'm gonna show you the final little stage to this. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop when I get this pink sewn on here. I'm gonna backstitch, and normally I would not do this step, but there's no sense in me just showing you this when I'd really rather show you how to get a good fray on these fabrics. So I really like my fabrics on this technique to fray quite a bit. And you can see how frayed this one is already, I like that. And I can fray them all the way to the stitch line. The stitch line will stop the fraying. Or I can just let them fray as much as I can get them to fray. And that's when my little handy-dandy straight pin comes into play because to get this to fray really well, I simply come into the end of the fabric here and I pull up little strands of fabric with that pin, little strands of thread that make this fabric. And I pull it out from the crosswise weft. And just pull those little fibers and that causes it to fray even more. So I'll sit in front of the television watching a movie late at night and fray the fabrics on the edge of my quilt because I just like the way it looks. And so I'll just keep fraying that and pulling those fibers out until I've got as many out as I want, and I've got as much fray as I want. And then I tend to rough it up and make them kind of stand up and grab attention. So yeah, this takes a little bit of time, but it's really worth it 'cause it's kind of cool. And then when I've got all that out there, I'll kind of just rough that edge up, like so, and lift up that fray, and so that I have this fray all the way around that edge. So even though I've ripped those fabrics, some fabrics rip and immediately make tons of fray, and other fabrics you can barely even tell that you ripped them when you rip them. So you wanna make sure you get lots of good fray around there, just use that pin. So this is just a very fun, very secure, great technique to edge a quilt with. Adds lots of visual interest because it's got all that tactile texture. Great way to use up all the scraps from the inside of your quilt. And can be used for love quilts or bed quilts too, not just art quilts, it's a lot of fun. We've got four more techniques. So I'm gonna go to the next one.
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