March 2024
HOW TO FOLD A QUILT TO PREVENT FIBER DAMAGE
AND TO ALLEVIATE HEAVY CREASES
March has really marched in with rainy weather. As much as I find it wonderful that California is no longer considered in a drought, enough already! I may have to go buy gopher wood and begin building a big boat. Rain or dry, have a wonderful March with St. Patrick’s Day coming, Passover, and Easter. I am back again, happily sewing and visiting in person at the Clubhouse 4 quilt room on Mondays and plan some more escapes on the other afternoons the room is available. I hope to see you there.
So, how do you fold your quilts? When you take out a stored quilt, does it have heavy creases? Mine sure does. Recently I came across an alternate way to fold a quilt which can result in less creasing when you take out the quilt to use it.
Folding a quilt on the bias is a better way to fold a quilt to prevent fiber damage to the fabric and to prevent the heavy creases caused when you fold a quilt with the grain or cross grain.
The following picture shows how fabric creases from folding it selvage to selvage and rolling it tightly on a bolt utilizing the typical cardboard core. It takes forever to press out those hard tight creases if it is at all possible.
The next picture shows one of the creases in my quilt which is stored from January until December each year.
On a YouTube video I recently watched from Shelly at Matante Quilting, in addition to bias folding quilts for storage, Shelly stated that as a long arm quilter she asks her customers to fold quilt tops and the backing on the bias before sending the quilt to be quilted. Folding on the bias saves the quilter from having to press the top as well as the backing prior to quilting.
This makes sense. As the maker, you press the fabrics to lay flat and then you fold them up and take them or send them to be sandwiched and quilted. Once the quilter receives the top and backing, they must be pressed once again prior to loading them on the long arm machine, and everyone hopes all the creases will be gone before the quilting process can be successful. Hopefully, the bias folding will change this double work.
In addition to YouTube, Shelly has a website at matantequilting.com. She features a discussion on her approach to bias folding. The following is an excerpt from her website blog, the photos are from me folding my quilt using her steps.
“Starting Point”
“I’m going to show you on my living room floor, but if you don’t have a large open space like this (or don’t want to put your quilts on the floor), you can easily do this on a bed.
“Start by laying your quilt with the piecing face-down. When you’re done folding, the piecing will be on the outside, which will help you easily identify it. The diagonal folds you’re about to create will all be on the bias, which means they’ll help prolong the life of your quilt.” (source: matantequilting.com)
(pardon the perspective, I am standing on a stool and my arms are not long enough to make this look like a proper rectangle)
“Step 1”
“Grab the bottom right corner and fold it towards the center of the quilt. I like to make sure that the point is past the center of the quilt (but I don’t ever measure). You want to create an (approximately) 45° angle and have these two edges of the quilt be parallel.” (source: matantequilting.com)
“Step 2”
“Grab the bottom left corner of the quilt and fold towards the center of the quilt. You want the two edges to be touching, and these two edges to be parallel. At this point, your quilt should look (sort of) like an upside down house.” (source: matantequilting.com)
“Step 3”
“Pull in the top right corner of the quilt towards the center of the quilt. The bottom folds should be touching, and these two folds should be parallel to each other. If your point is extending beyond the edge of the quilt, just tuck it back under so that you have two parallel folds.” (source: matantequilting.com)
“Step 4”
“Take the last remaining corner and fold it towards the center. All of the edges should be lined up, leaving you with a roughly rectangular (or square) shape.”
(source: matantequilting.com)
“Step 5”
“Now all you have to do is take this rectangle and fold it into a smaller one until it will fit on your shelf. Since all of the outside edges are folded on the bias, you can now fold this the regular way and all of the news folds will ALSO be on the bias!” (source: matantequilting.com)
In our house, quilts are stored in an underbed zippered bag, so this is as small as I need to fold this quilt. I plan to refold all my stored quilts on the bias, including table runners. I look forward to seeing the results in the future.
Have a great March. If you do a YouTube search on “folding quilts on the bias”, you will get several videos to watch. Send any comments on tidbits to me on email. You can find my email address on the members only section on the Crazy Quilter’s website. I can use your help to come up with future tidbit topics, please let me know if you would like me to write a tidbit based on your ideas. Blessings to you and your family. I plan to be back in April with another tidbit.