DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Weblog

Tracey Pereira says “Use a surge protector” for your sewing machines, sergers and other electronics in your sewing room. Great advice, as some sewing machines today are just as sensitive to power surges and spikes as your home theater and stereo systems are. Tracey shares the complete hows and the whys of using a surge [...]

Pretest any new marking pen or pencil. It is too easy to find out what should wash out, doesn’t wash out, or the chemical leaves a residue that can damage the fabric. I recommend marking scrap fabric, washing, drying, and leaving a piece taped to a sunny window for a few months (to see if [...]

If you’re on a tight budget (when you’re making your pennies scream because you’re pinching them so hard) then take advantage of sales and clearance fabrics. Okay, so you can’t get nice coordinating fabrics that are all from the same line or maker, but you can end up with some really great fabrics for 50-75% [...]

If you already have a heat tool to apply hot fix crystals and other such embellishments, you can purchase an extra tip shaped like a mini-iron to use with it, and get two tools for just a little over the price of one! Visit Cheri’s Crystals for the pressing tip and other “Cool Tools”!

Quilters from all walks of life have embraced twitter.com as a quick and easy way to connect with other quilty friends across the U.S. and world, 140 characters at a time. Use Twitter’s search function to find twitterers with similar interests. By simply typing in search words like “quilt”, “quilting”, “applique”, etc., you’ll meet interesting [...]

There’s no hard and fast rule about matching beading thread to the beads or to the background fabric. Sometimes matching the beads looks best, and sometimes it looks better to match the background fabric depending on the beads, the type of stitch, or the style of the project. Experiment to see what works best on [...]

When you’re stitching two patchwork pieces together and one isn’t quite the same size as the other, if the difference isn’t too large you can ease the two pieces together to match while stitching. Pin the pieces together, matching the edges at each end. Place the bigger fabric piece on the bottom as you feed [...]