Sue’s Tips on Preparing Your Quilt for a Long arm Quilter

(These tips are also pretty good for preparing your quilt for your own quilting too.)

· Press well!!!
· Get all of the stray threads and hanging threads off the quilt. You might want to use a lint roller to assist. You don’t want anything that could get caught in the sewing foot and cause a rip in your quilt.
· Get the borders on the quilt properly. Measure through the middle of your quilt horizontally and vertically and cut your borders to this size. This will make your quilt square up properly. Back tack all seams on the border. Consider adding ½ inch extra to the border to allow for truing up when trimming.
· You might want to straight stitch around the outside edge of the quilt 1/8 of an inch from the edge to prevent stretching.
· Try to keep all fabric weights and types similar.
· On backs rip fabric at edge to find the straight of grain. Use this as your straight edge. When sewing seams use 1” seam allowance and then trim down to ½”. Use a smaller stitch length on the back and always back tack at the start of seams. Always press seams to one side on the backing, do not press them open. the backing needs to be a minimum of 3 inches bigger than the top all the way around - 4 or 5 is better.
· If you provide batting to the quilter, always provide the package it came in so that quilter can determine how closely the quilting needs to be done.
· Make sure you discuss clearly with your quilter what you want done on the quilt and what color thread you want used.
· If you are allergic to cats or dogs, ask the quilter if they have pets in their home. If they do, you should consider using another quilter because it is almost impossible to keep pet hairs 100% out of quilts.