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Why would anyone want to burn fabric?

Perhaps a better question is: have you ever wondered if a fabric you want to use in a quilt is 100% cotton? There is an easy test to check. Many of you may already know this, but I’m hoping some of you will find this helpful.

Recently I was cleaning out the cupboard where I keep my quilt backing pieces and non-cotton fabrics. I found a piece of black and white polka dot fabric and wondered why it wasn’t in with the rest of my stash.

Perhaps it was a polyester blend. Nothing on the selvedge showed fiber content, so I grabbed a book of matches, cut off a corner of the yardage, and went outside.

I lit the pointy end with a match and watched it burn. I waited for it to cool, then I picked it up and when I rubbed it between my fingers, the residue was a soft ash.

This is the case for natural fibers such as cotton, rayon, linen, silk, etc.

For the sake of comparison I cut a triangle from a fabric I knew was a polyester.

The results? It melted.

You can see the light reflecting in the “plastic-like” burned semi-circle on the fabric, and the small black piece was stuck to the cement. Man made fabrics like polyester and nylon melt rather than ash.

The next day I pulled out some beautiful scraps I wanted to use in my next challenge quilt.

They were given to me by a woman I stayed with when I taught for a quilt guild in Eau Claire, WI. She told me there was a men’s necktie factory nearby and they sold their scraps by the pound. She then gifted me with a bag full.

Before I attempted to make them into appliqué shapes, I thought I’d better check to see if they were silk or polyester, because ties can be made from either. I’m happy to say they all passed the burn test and are silk:

The interesting thing was the ash was not as soft as the cotton fabric and it had a bit of a gritty feel when I rubbed it between my fingers. I guess I’ve never burned silk before because I was a little surprised by this.

Do any of you use this test for your fabrics? Any other thoughts you’d like to share  🙂 ?

While at the Sister’s Quilt Show Expo in Oregon this past Summer, l happened upon the Babylok™ booth and was intrigued by a sample the rep had made using swimsuit material. Because the fabric was shiny and stretchy, the machine quilting was dimensional and dynamic. Then, on our way back to Portland, we stopped at a huge fabric store and I found a piece of metallic copper spandex knit – on a clearance rack! I went home with 2 yards.

When the Milwaukee Art Quilters chose “Art Deco” as their large challenge theme this year, I knew I had the fabric and the quilting idea, I just needed a design. I did a bit of web-surfing and found a site with instructions for creating “Great Gatsby Style Patterns” in Photoshop. (in case you’re interested it’s:  http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-create-a-great-gatsby-style-art-deco-pattern).

After a bit of trial and error I chose a design. Next I made a few small stitching samples with a variety of different batts and stabilizers, so I could try stitching on this very non-traditional fabric and see what worked best.

I decided to create the quilt top using my Silhouette Appliqué technique:

1. I drew my design, with a sliver of soap, onto a black cotton fabric,
2. I then layered it on the copper spandex fabric, both right sides up. Next I placed this on the wool batting and stabilizer I had chosen. I pinned in areas where the black fabric would not be cut away, because the copper fabric shows pin marks.
3. In black thread, I stitched on all the soap lines using a walking foot.
4. The black fabric was cut away, close to the stitching, everywhere I wanted the copper to show.
5. Next, all of the raw edges needed to be satin stitched. When satin stitching, the spandex would begin to drag under the toe of the machine foot while the toe on the black fabric moved fine. This sheering effect was not working at all, but I was able to slip a piece of paper under the spandex side of the machine foot and then it stitched quite well.

Once the appliqué was done, I layered everything over a piece of flat cotton batt, and the quilt backing fabric, re-pinning in the black fabric areas once again.

Stay tuned, in my next post I’ll cover the trickiest part – the quilting!

Thanks to everyone who responded to my survey about quilt classes a few weeks ago. It was interesting to see how many of you like scrap quilts and it got me thinking about a technique I developed for sorting my scraps by value. Value is the relative darkness/lightness of a fabric and it can make or break many quilt patterns. I came up with a value  sorting technique when I was making a quilt I called Almost Charming.

I had been in my guild’s 6″ square exchange and decided to use those squares  in the Friendship Star pattern and this ended up becoming a very popular class. A true charm quilt has only one piece of each fabric used. Because I cut each square into triangles, there are two pieces of each fabric and thus it is “Almost Charming”.

When sorting scraps for a quilt, some patterns require just lights and darks, with the mediums needing to be removed for the pattern to work. Other patterns need lights, darks and mediums, but if there isn’t a clear delineation between the values, the pattern can get lost. The Friendship Star uses darks in the stars, lights in the background (which becomes the diagonal lattice when the blocks are set together) and mediums in the remaining “on point squares at the corners of each 9 patch star block.

I grabbed a bunch of 6″ squares (even after making this quilt I still have a box full – I think they multiply in the dark like bunnies)

Step 1 – quickly and without any deep thinking, divide the fabrics into 2 piles: lights and darks (there are no wrong answers, so just do it)

2. Using the same quick method, take the dark pile and divide it into 2 piles: light and dark (remember value is relative to what’s being sorted)

3. Now do this for the original light pile.

4. Here’s the tricky part (remember not to overthink anything) – of the four piles before you, set the dark/darks and the light/lights aside. Now sort the medium/dark pile from step 2 into 2 piles: dark and light; and sort the medium/light pile from step 3 into 2 piles: dark and light. This will give you 4 medium piles.

5. By removing two of these piles there will be a definite difference between the darks, the mediums and the lights. The pile on the far left and the pile on the far right above need to be removed. The two center piles will be combined to form the “mediums”.

So here you have it all. The 3 piles along the bottom of the picture are the dark, medium and light piles. The 2 piles at the top of the picture are the ones set aside for use in a future quilt.

So what are “Beautiful Buts”?

I wish I remembered where I learned this expression, but the concept has stuck with me. There are some fabrics printed with an equal amount of dark and light in them. They are usually “beautiful – but” they are not dark, light or medium. They are Beautiful Buts and they often don’t work well in scrap quilts and will need to be set aside. Here are just a few:

I hope you found this helpful. Do you have any helpful tips for sorting by value?

What great comments. I especially liked the expression “shopping your stash”. Thanks Cindy. I think many of us could make wonderful quilts without ever making a trip to the quilt shop.

I was very convicted by Pat’s challenge to use my Liberty fabrics and they’re hanging on the design wall now just waiting for the right idea to grab me. (this may happen after the holidays – we’ll see). 

While I was writing the “Too Beautiful” post I came to realize that I actually had reached the point a few years ago that when I buy a fabric I really love I allow myself to use it as inspiration for something new right away. The blendable, “tone on tones” go into the stash, but when the new, jaw dropper, makes my fingers start to itch I’ll often just ignore the guilt of that project I’m in the middle of (which isn’t as exciting as when it was first begun) and indulge in playing with the exciting stuff.

Another method I’ve found helpful lately is to put the new gorgeous stuff in the stash just until the next time I’m ready to take a new challenge or I need to come up with a new class project. Then I grab that inticing piece and allow it to be the impetous for this new endeavor. This usually helps to get the ball rolling. Picking out other fabrics to go with the exciting one is always such fun for me.

The only problem with this system is that the great fabrics from my “petting and not using” days are still in the stash. So, thanks to Pat, I’m going to focus on some past loves. Who knows, some of them may look great together.

Perhaps I should step away from the computer and fondle some fabric :-). Blessings, Chris