Blog
Latest quilting insights, ideas, and news.- Aug 13, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
You spend countless hours on every quilt you make. Searching for or creating the perfect pattern (pssst.. need a little help with this step? Check out our favorite patterns here), selecting the combination of fabric and thread that will make the perfect color scheme, piecing every scrap with perfect precision and care. Your longarm should deliver the same careful att...
Read More- Aug 13, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
Making a sawtooth star block happens in two parts. For every sawtooth star, you'll need to piece together four flying geese first. In this step-by-step guide to making your own sawtooth star (or evening star, or morning star, or variable star, or north star—choose your preferred name), we'll walk you through how to make flying geese four at a time, and how to u...
Read More- Aug 19, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
Jaymi’s creativity has taken many forms over her life. She hand-sewed clothes for her Barbies and mixed bread and glue to make clay, she learned tatting, knitting, and crocheting—but when she saved up to buy her own sewing machine in junior high school, she paved a new path for her creativity. Gradually, Jaymi worked her way up from sewing dresses out...
Read More- Sep 04, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
At face level, choosing the right thread for the quilting or sewing project you have planned is easy. Just pick the thread that will best complement the colors of your quilt top, your backing, your binding. It turns out, there’s a little more to it than that. Don’t panic! We’re here to help you navigate the consideratio...
Read More- Sep 13, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
Sure, you’ve been piecing quilts on your trusty sewing machine for years, but if you thought that the actual quilting had to be done by hand, on a longarm quilting machine, or with ties, think again. Plenty of talented quilters work exclusively on domestic machines, making everything from baby quilts all the way up to king size. All it takes is the bravery t...
Read More- Oct 07, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
Have you ever spent hours finishing a quilt only to find out that the design just doesn’t look the way it did in your head? Maybe the fabric doesn’t jive, or you sewed a block the wrong direction, or all the little pieces don’t go the way you thought they would. All that frustration could have been avoided with a design wall! Design walls can be...
Read More- Oct 17, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
A quilt sandwich has three parts: The quilt top: the part of the quilt where all the piecing magic happens. The batting: the fluffy material that goes between your quilt top and backing. The backing: the fabric that makes up the backside of your quilt. Batting isn't flashy, but it impacts your quilt's outcome in several important ways. Things to Con...
Read More- Oct 23, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
The next block in our basic block series is the rail fence block! Its simple design makes it a good starting place for beginning quilters, and its versatile appearance keeps experienced quilters coming back for more. In this how-to guide, we'll show you how to create a design with two alternating color strips, but you can rearrange the order of the colors to get a pi...
Read More- Nov 18, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
The binding of a quilt holds the quilt sandwich together and visually brings all the elements of your quilt top and backing together. Let’s explore the different methods quilters like you use to bind their quilts. What is Binding? In quilting, binding is the strip of fabric that covers the raw edges of your quilt top, batting, and backing. This...
Read More- Dec 20, 2024
- Grace Company
- The Grace Company
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there are even more ways to finish a quilt. When you’re just getting into quilting, it’s important to explore all the quilting methods out there to understand what kind of skills you want to build. We’ll break some of the most popular quilt-finishing methods into their pros and cons, so you can figu...
Read More