frannella

Recently I was surfing YouTube for quilting videos and caught a reference to something along the lines of "I love circle rulers but don't like the holes you get from the pins used in circular quilting ruler work." The quilter (and for some reason I think s/he may have been male, but memory fades), then demoed some technique that relied on a certain brand of embroidery tape (double sided?) that freed you from having to skewer all 3 layers of your quilt sandwich with the pin/tack. .
I wrote myself a note about the embroidery tape and the video but I can't find it. I wonder if this rings any bells for you? I have googled and googled and googled trying to retrace my steps, but can't find the reference. It may have been a YT reference embedded within another YT video, making it all the more elusive. TIA and best regards.

marsharini

I take a piece of embroidery tape sticky side down and place it over the pin/tack so the pin pierces the tape. The sticky side is then facing the fabric and I can use whatever ruler uses the pins without poking holes in my quilt. It also makes it easier to move the pin around, although you will need to change out the tape every other move because it loses stickiness.

lindaschipper

Maybe I'm not getting the point here....what size pins are/was she using that caused such big holes in the fabric? My quilt pins never do that, and when the quilt is washed after quilting and binding shouldn't the holes tighten back up? Mine do.

frannella

Thank you Marsharini! I have never used embroidery tape--any brand you care to recommend? Thank you again.

frannella

Hi Linda--thank you for your reply. I am not speaking of 'regular' quilt straight pins or quilting safety pins, but rather a thumbtack-sized pin, the shaft of which is thicker than even the thickest quilting straight pin. You can see the tack pin that comes with Westalee's Quilting Circles templates in a YT video entitled Quilting Circles by Leonie West.

The circle quilting templates have a small hole near the bottom of the template and they are anchored onto what is basically an upside down thumb tack. The gist is you secure your quilt sandwich on the anchor post and sew along the gentle curves of the template until you have to rotate your template to continue sewing along the curves until you complete a ringed circle. Westalee's rulers are brilliant and do a very nice job on concentric circle quilting patterns BUT all the rotations of your circle template skewered onto a thumbtack leave a larger than usual pinhole that washing and drying doesn't necessarily take care of.

marsharini

You’re very welcome. Happy to pass on the tip I got from someone else.

I use RK Embroidery Perfection tape. It’s bright pink, sticky only on one side. I use about a little bit more than an inch each time. It lasts forever since I bought specifically for ruler quilting.

The Westelee Circles on Quilts is what I used it for most recently and it worked great for quilting Baptist Fans on the queen size quilt I made for my sister. Happy quilting!

quiltsfor

When I use the Westalee Circles on Quilts that have the pin holes or with the Spin-E-Fex that needs to stop and start in the same place as you spin it, I put a mark on my quilt top with a fabric marker (I use heat erasable ones) then I just line up the pin hole on my mark or the starting/stopping point with the Spin-E-Fex. I haven't had any issues with placement as I quilt the design. Matter-of-fact, I have never used the thumbtack that comes with the rulers with the pin holes and have just tossed the thumbtack in the trash.