Tips and tricks for using linen
So you've just purchased some 100% linen and are likely oohing and ahhing over the texture, “It’s beautiful”, you think.. “ but what the heck have I gotten myself into? It’s so flowy- how on earth am I going to accurately cut pieces to make a quilt?" Never fear! I have put together a list of my top tips as a "seasoned" linen quilter with quite a few linen quilts under my belt (and only one minor quilting pucker!)
If it does get a little tricky, stick with it- you'll end up with an amazing soft and cosy quilt! Just the other day, Tim asked me to pass him a quilt (we have quite a few in our lounge room) and when I grabbed one he said “no the other one, it’s really soft”, referring to one of the linen ones we have- so if that’s not a testament to the softness of linen, I don’t know what it :-)
Tips and Tricks
Don’t expect perfection- if you are only going to read or follow one tip, this is it! Linen is a bit trickier to work with (compared to normal quilting cotton) so some of your pieces may be slightly off. However, this also works to your advantage. Because it’s “stretchy”, I found that often I would slightly miscut a piece (just a bit off) but once it was all pieced together and pressed, it magically got into shape.
Press your seams open. I‘m usually too impatient to press my seams open but I always try to with linen- it gives it a much better finish
Consider pre-washing your linen just in case (I never have personally but there are lots of different qualities of linen out there)
Press and starch before you start cutting. Lots of starch. My favourite is Crisp which you can get from the supermarket in Australia or I’m sure there are similar ones overseas too. Just choose the one you think your grandma would have used :-)
After you have pressed the whole piece of fabric, fold it in half (selvage to selvage) and then in half again (selvage to selvage) so you have a long skinny piece. Make sure your edges line up as nicely as possible and then press the edges into sharp creases. This will help keep the linen in place when you cut your WOF strips / pieces (especially useful as linen usually as quite a large Width of fabric!)
If you have some wiggle room with the amount of fabric, once you’re at your cutting mat, rather than trying to line the edge up perfectly, just trim it- then you have a nice straight line to start with.
I hope that helps- as always feel free to contact me if you have any questions!
