Give a Gift
All photos in this article are provided by the designer.
I know that we are constantly being advised to enjoy that process of whatever we are doing and on the whole, that is great advice. We should indeed enjoy every part of our hobby or at least most of it because if we do not, the question might come up as to why we are doing these hobbies.
But I would like to stand up at this point and say that sometimes it is okay to have shortcut. We are human and there are going to be tasks in every hobby that we wish we could avoid or at least reduce.
One particular thing which comes to mind is the assembling of small and very repetitive pieces to make a patchwork quilt top. Now, I am not talking about those highly intricate designs which keep us engaged and fully occupied until we lose track of time and enter a flow state. The sort of project where you find out that the children are eating cereal out of the cat’s bowl again because you are buried under a pile of the most gorgeous fabric.
I am talking about identical components which seem like a never-ending task. Small squares, I am very much looking at you.
It seemed like such a good idea at the time: cut all of the scraps that you have ever saved into squares or rectangles and then join them all together to make a wonderful quilt to cover the biggest bed. Think of all the memories. Think of the virtuous clean up! Think of the saving on fabric…..think of the hours and hours and hours of sewing two of each of these squares together, jamming the machine and creating thread nests from now until the end of time. Think of that. Many a well-meaning project has been abandoned halfway through because of that. It is a Sisyphean task.
Well, I am here to save you and to tell you that the project can go ahead. There is a short cut and it is called chain piecing. Can you hear the singing from on high?
How to Chain Piece
Chain piecing is where we basically sew everything together into a long, joined chain. Normally you might take two squares and sew them together. And then take another two and keep going until the pile is high. You would stop between each one and cut the thread, trim it, rinse and repeat.
With chain piecing, you don’t stop. You start out with your lovely fabric scraps cut into the square size of choice. Sometimes you will need to sort them into colors or patterns if you are making a specific block and do watch out for directional prints. Just for fun, we will make this easier by pretending that we are using random scraps to make a random pattern.
You grab any two and place them right sides together, ready to sew. And this is where we need to stop; if you sew these two squares, chances are the machine will eat them. You know, that moment where instead of cleanly punching through the fabric and creating beautiful stitches, your needle pushes the fabric down into the maw of the feed dogs pretty thoroughly and you need to dismantle most of your machine to pull it out again?
This doesn’t happen every time but it happens enough- the fix is easy. You need a ‘leader’.
A leader is simply a scrap of fabric, folded over as a rule where you can start sewing. You then leave the presser foot down and feed your pairs in. Your sewing machine will instantly recognize you as master and stop misbehaving.
Start about half way along the leader so that your machine doesn’t grab that and have a couple of pairs of the ‘real’ patches ready to sew. As you get to about two thirds the way along the leader, put the first pair down right up against the leader. It is important to put the squares up against the leader because not many machines like sewing with no fabric under the needle.
Each time you are about two thirds the way along a pair, have the next ones ready to feed in and keep this up until you have a chain of pieces.
While you are learning the technique, keep the chains manageable, about 15-20 pairs maximum and then stop and trim before starting again. As you can see here, there is just enough thread space between the pairs to snip.
Then you start again with the next chain until your scraps are gone.
Okay, but now you have a pile of pairs. This is still a long way from the promised quilt top. Well yes, it is so now, you take your pairs and do the same again. Start with the leader and join two pairs to make four. And when everything is made into lots of four, trim and begin again.
I think that you can see the pattern now. Instead of stop and start and only ever (in this lifetime anyway) ending up with two squares, every time you begin again, you get multiples and then multiples of multiples. The quilt top builds quite quickly.
This technique works really well for scrappy patchwork where you do not have to think. If you are working on a color pattern, you can still use the method but you have to think and plan a bit more. Your pattern will tell you what to do in this case but you will still usually see where chain piecing can be used.
The main thing is that it makes your sewing more efficient because you are sewing continuously. It also feels like reducing a tedious part of the task so that you can spend more time on the parts of the project that you enjoy. It saves on thread too and you don’t have to use only small squares. Far from it. This method works with other sizes and other shapes too.
The leaders can be discarded at the end but I tend to use them a few times before I do that. When there is too much stitching on them, it is time to change.
All you need to do next is to press your strips and their seams and pin them together to make your quilt top. Each time you start over, you don’t just take a small step to finishing, it can feel like giant leaps.
So now it is time to go to your scrap basket and start organizing them into shapes.
We are good to go!