Margo, do you wash the quilt top to get the starch out before you sandwich the quilt to quilt. Or do you go ahead and quilt your quilt and then wash your quilt? Paulan in Arkansas

As Margo points out the stopping and starting pieces, chain stitching, etc eliminate so many thread ends. They are a reason that I very often am stitching two projects at the same time. This way it also helps my pressing if I am working with set blocks so that the pieces stay together for pressing and subsequent stitchings. I don't starch and I only have an occasional stray thread or fabric lint that has to be dealt with.

Where are all your threads coming from???

If you will use a "starty/stoppy" there should be nothing but tiny thread tails that shouldn't be an issue!
These are just little scraps of fabric that you start your stitching line on before you sew your seams, then sew off onto at the end of the seam. When you cut off the starty/stoppy you have no more excess thread than between pieces that are sewn assembly-line style. All the long bothersome threads are on the starty/stoppies!

You can see the "starty" behind the pieces that I'm sewing together. I find that Alex's 4-in-1 tool is fabulous for cutting the threads when I'm just doing single seams instead of chain piecing. The long thread tails that you can see on a previous seam is about the longest I ever have left on my piecing, and that is just because I was careless. I can't imagine spending 2 days trimming threads!

Try it! You'll like it!

Well, I'm certainly not as organized as Margo. And I don't use starch yet because a quilt could sit around my house for 5 years waiting to be finished and I'm afraid of leaving starch in the fabric that long... So, I take my thread snippers and sit in front of some good old movies -Turner Classic Movies or some good musicals on DVD - and snip for about 2 days, depending on the quilt size. Two days for a Twin-ish. Maybe 3 for a Queen. Maybe I could crank out a lap size in a day. But I HATE snipping threads, so I drag it out as long as possible The right movies make the chore more fun. BUT, don't pick anything with, say, Paul Newman in it or you'll just watch Paul and maybe cut a hole in your quilt. No, I haven't done that yet. I know better
-Tina

Gee Margo you age certainly going to have to come on over to Australia and live with me and do all my sewing for me while i just sit and watch.....well i would make you coffee.....okay okay and a cake too

When I'm pinning the quilt I keep a tweezer and little scissors nearby to take care of threads sticking out from the seams. May in Jersey

You are right Lynn! I have very few threads as you can see from this photo of the back of part of my 2011 BOM.

The starch also makes it easy for me to "twirl" my intersections so that they press really flat. I will have instructions in my additional BOM tutorials showing how I do that.



If you click twice on the photo you will get a much closer view.

How long does it take you to clean up all the stray threads, clip the ones still attached, and generally get comfortable that there won't be any 'peek thrus' after it's quilted. I always dread this as there is so much. And I'm also thinking that if I used as much starch as Margo mentions, maybe there wouldn't be so much floating around.
Lynn