Cuddle Backed Quilts with Teresa Coates

[Music] thank you [Music] hi everybody it's Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company and I am here with Teresa Coates from Shannon fabrics and she is a cuddle expert all right probably more waste than one right yeah you're a good cuddler I think so I think we should have a little cuddle right now anyway anyway we are going to talk about backs of quilts today yeah it's probably one of my favorite things especially if well for any size quilt to put a cuddle on the back yes yeah there's lots of awesome things and my one of my favorites is how the design shows up when you quilt it that is really like one of my favorite things there's two things that I love about a cuddle backing and one is how soft it stays and the other is how the design just pops that's right yeah completely all right so let's talk about what we need if we're going to work with cuddle and sizes they come in and that sort of thing so cuddle comes in um two different sizes basically so there's a 60 inch wide which is our normal cuddle three that you're going to see all the flat stuff and some of the prints right and then also the Luxe cuddles come in that same size but you can also get a cuddle three that is 90 inches wide that's perfect for quilt backings for larger quilts and there's also one that is 80 inches wide that's a Luxe cuddle so you do have some variability of 60 80 or 90 inches wide to be able to figure out whichever size you're making for your quilt it'll fit now cuddle is a polyester fabric fabric correct it is it's a microfiber plush 100 polyester I just had to reach in here and touch it you do so you want to keep cutting it the whole time when you sew with it you want to use that's right we just keep cuddling it when you sew with it you want to use a polyester thread polyester thread okay so that's different for us Quilters even for even as um as on a quilt you're going to use polyester thread okay when you're quilting it and then uh and then you want a special needle yep so when you're when you're piecing it or if you're sewing it on your domestic machine you would want to use the stretch needle for that oh okay so you can use is there only at the stretch are there other kinds of needles we can use well you shouldn't use a universal unless you absolutely have to okay but really the ball points the Jersey the stretch needles are all pretty interchangeable okay I think a lot of times when you get a sewing machine too they come with like a variety they do yeah yeah so you know so so that's what you would use any polyester fabric you would use that stretch exactly and especially because it's a knit you want to make sure that we're using the right needle okay that makes sense I I rarely change my needle on my sewing machine unless it breaks and so which I know that nobody wants to hear that but uh you know but I would I would probably it'd probably be best and the reason is you don't want to pierce or cut the thread because you want it to slide in you want it to slide in between and that's exactly what will happen with the Jersey the ballpoint or the stretch all right that is awesome so I think we should look at some cuttlebags what are you doing all right so we've got this little quilt here oh wait we never talked about cutting it we need to talk about cutting we should talk about cutting that down okay sorry all right so you're going to have to cut your cuddle and it can be um a little furry a little messy yeah it can be so one you can get the two yard Cuts right we've talked about like those are great I love the two yard Cuts honestly I um I had a bunch of them and literally I sewed my ends and my sides the sides the side with the Selvage doesn't stretch there is a stretch there is a stretch yep widthwise is stretching yes and uh and so you have to be careful about how you put that on a quilt but literally I just love sewing those together so much yeah the two-year cuts are great and they do work really really well of course almost like a weighted blanket yeah I love it and it's and you can use any any types of cuddles there's there's all kinds of colors and all kinds of sizes of big hundreds and I think we carry most of those here I think so I love it I love that we do I'm glad you do so yeah cutting it with those little scissors okay Karen K Buckley's are my favorite for cutting it you just kind of slide it just cut the backing is what you're doing it's just cutting the backing you can cut it with a rotary cutter just hit it with your background piece right there and let's look at how that looks because what we what we really want to do is if you cut it with a rotary cutter you're literally cutting all the fluff off and and you'll have a lot of uh you'll you'll look yeah you'll be covered yeah you'll be covered so I'm just going to cut just a little section over here because I want to show you something later yeah let me just show you just a little bit so we're just going to slide it right underneath I can see if maybe from if you do it from the end right here okay so that because really you're just sliding it in the fibers yep and then you're just you can actually see the little yeah you don't have to cut it but we're just showing them okay because I know this is for something else all right we're just going to slide it under there cut it um and the other thing is you could like I said you can cut it with a rotary cutter just have a vacuum ready yeah so I actually heard that you could use like um um people use an indoor I wouldn't know what are those called a little hand vac that's what I do just run it along where you cut it yep that's a great idea it's great yeah because I imagine with the amount of cuddle that you cut you would be like knee-deep before too long yes yeah absolutely all right so let's look at some backs we have this great quilt hanging behind us and this is one Misty made on at home with Misty and it is backed in cuddle and the name of this quilt let me check for sure is it's called Summer Sky so this is the Summer Sky pattern and then on the back we have quilted it with with cuddle and we use the champagne bubbles um quilting thing and look how it shows up it's so beautiful and this is the berry color it's just gorgeous and honestly I love to bind with on you know on a cuddle quilt because you're it's just like binding through butter it's so beautiful so I want to I want to point out that this one is stitched together so this is something you can do if your quilt is larger and the quilt the color is only in the c390 the cuddle or the c360 so the 60 inchers you can actually so if it's 60 inches wide you can piece it together and have a much larger backing yeah if that color is not available in the larger one and you and I are both clothing sewers so we know about the nap yes and the nap is something you don't really know as a quilter but it's it's means that your fabric is going to lay one way if you brush it this way and it's going to lay the other way if you brush it this way so you when you put them together you want your nap to be the same yes which is very important otherwise otherwise you'll actually it so softness it won't matter no no but it'll kind of look like two different colors it looks like two different colors yeah I think that's really fascinating yeah so you want to make sure about that but yeah you can you can quilt it with any of it we have an awesome little baby quilt right here and this one is called Starlet and it's uh there's a tutorial on both of these and it's just this fun because it's made with flannel and cotton and and cuddle on the back there we go so here's our back and this little um this little quilting pattern is called cotton candy and look how darling it was almost looks like Shamrocks on here it kind of does yeah but I love how it it shows up the pattern it just so well there's so many times where I'm like I just want this on my bed yeah which of course you can do you can you can get two pieces of cuddle and make yourself a lovely that's exactly what I did there so this this color is called opal and it is um it's just beautiful and this is just the cuddle three the regular 60 inches wide which works great for throws or baby size quilts right okay so you have one over there that is Cuddle on both sides it is it's just cuddle so it's cuddle uh the cuddle three the smooth stuff on one so you've got the two yard cuts that you could get you know this is what you get because this is just hide which we have two yard cuts of I know and then it's just a C3 on the front so we can kind of hold this up and then do a little show and tell so this is the smooth side which you can see the cut the quilting is so weather and that's adorable what I love is that if I turn it this way it kind of disappears and just becomes textural it does it does become textural you can still see the quilting pattern and that's fun but it's just it's just gorgeous how it soaks up and there's no batting in here nope no just the two together yep and then you've also bound it and I bound it with the cuddle I love that yep and I love it so when we're quilting it when we're quilting and using cotton on the front I always recommend that you use a batting inside of it I think it just holds better it hangs better all of that good stuff for sure but if you're putting two layers of cuddle together there's no reason for the batting and it makes it just the perfect right right I really love this all right so let's talk about how you finish these you know how you put the you know the binding on these right so that one I just used a cuddle three binding so I just so what does three mean cuddle three three is referring it's very technical it does it does so there's cuddle and then there's cuddle three and we just refer to that that's the flatter stuff so the smooth stuff okay so the the stuff that isn't not this this is Lux right this one here is is just a couple of three or something sometimes I'll call it okay yeah yeah and that's what it means the nap is three millimeters now I've also heard this referred to as minky yes and it can be a little bit confusing it is minky fabric so minky is just a type of fabric like a canvas so it is a minky fabric m-i-n-k-y and then cuddle is just our brand name for it and then there are um there are probably you know better fabrics and this is like the Cadillac this is cuddle cuddle is the Cadillac it is it is the highest quality I just think there is nothing softer in the whole world so wonderful it's so great yeah all right so you have some little uh little pieces of quilts here where you're showing different types of binding I did and I do love this and I want to look at this right here because this has the Lux on this which we have put on I love how she says it yes yes she can feel this it's so good right yes and so so I do know that sometimes when we quilt with Lux it tends to want to poke through yes yeah and it totally will and it's just because it's a longer nap I mean it's gonna come back up through so that's normal that's normal there's a couple of ways that you can kind of combat it so when I was doing this sample I was trying some different things to see if using a different needle would help it didn't but what I do notice is you'll see that it happens a little bit on here on the white you'll see it yeah but you won't see it at all on the color yeah so using so using a background that is not white like a print background or a neutral back ahead of time you're going to put this on the back then you could use a different background color the same thing is true here is that you can actually just use the thread to match the backing so that's what I did here and even though it might have come up just a little you can't see it at all no so for me it's kind of a matter of trying to figure out okay how do I hide yeah a little like mistakes yeah things that I don't take a little bit of thought process in there to do that all right so let's talk about some of these finishes because you've got Reg regular bite look at this does this wash out do the Sparkles wash out no it's beautiful it stays sparkly glittery sparkly and it's awesome I love the way it catches the light oh my gosh so good all my all my 13 year old teenage Vibes just came out right yeah that's perfect so you what you've so just just walk me through these these are your samples so this is one that I did with just a cotton binding so I cut it two and a half inches on the bias sewed it to the back brought it around to the front and then just tossed and is that generally the way you would do a cuddle put it on the back and bring it to the front I do and there's a couple of reasons for that and one is that I can stitch it down by Machine pretty easily and I can see that it's you can see on the back it just hides right in here if it doesn't match perfectly and then I can also actually hand Stitch this to the cotton front if I wanted to okay so if I wanted to hide it I could and just hand Stitch that down so it doesn't have to be machine bound okay which I like a lot um and then this one is one that I bound two ways so I bound it with the Lux cuddle and this is Lux cuddle that looks so fun isn't it nice so in quitting batting mostly what you do is you do a two and a half inch or a two and a quarter inch strip yes and it's a double fold so you don't double fold these no it's just one and three quarter inches is what it is and then use a half inch seam allowance sew it to the back bring it around to the front and then this is actually a raw Edge oh you don't turn it on don't turn it under just lay it out here and just and you just zigzag it down that looks beautiful this is my favorite I really do I love the Luxe cuddle weave for the for the bindings I think it's just really pretty it's very nice and textural and hides the stitches beautiful and babies love those textures and this is just the the C3 as you call it three exactly and then I on this one I was just trying some different stitches and I did it in green so you can kind of see the stitches better so actually one of my favorite things about this knowing that you did it in green is you can barely see the thread like yeah I've sewn cuddle together using whatever thread was on my machine and nobody knows right exactly you can hide it and generally I use the pink on the back look how well that quilts up too yeah now you use your walking foot when you quilt correct I did okay yep I used my walking foot mostly all the time when I'm working with cuddle yeah yeah it probably never comes off your machine it really doesn't react no all right so this one is interesting to me so let's talk about this guy right here so this one is a self binding one and I know that you've talked about self-binding a quilt before so this is just with cuddle on the back and I quilted it with the with the cuddle on the Lux cuddle so this is the Galaxy in Mallard that's super pretty so beautiful look how pretty that is and I like it because it has all this kind of mix of color so it doesn't actually have to match match it's close enough so then I love what I want to ask about being a quilter is um do you leave this is your little batting right here do you leave it a certain size bigger yes so I want to do a one inch binding is what this is and I decided that from the beginning one inch is kind of the easiest so I stick with that and then I want to mark my where my my seam allowance would be so with this one it's a little bit bigger so I can make my points match okay it wasn't a perfect quarter inch but that's what I do is I Mark where I want it to end and then I mark one inch from that line and that's where I cut my batting oh okay one inch one inch further is where I cut the fabric okay and so then you just pull this to the line yep so this is fascinating to me because you know in the old days when we learned a quilt I learned a quilt in the 90s you I think you did too yeah correct yep we a lot of times we didn't do the binding we and so it's fascinating that we're that this looks so perfect and we're doing that yeah it's super easy and so this is just zigzagged down here it's just zigzagged yeah all right so you do have a mitered corner here do you want to show us how to do that and it's kind of a perfect miter Corner perfect yeah I love I love this technique so let me have the ruler and the marker and I'll show you what I do all right so it's really a really nice Corner you're gonna love this okay so this is this I will say that this is the easiest way to do it with cuddle but it doesn't necessarily work with cotton you've got a place to work with cotton but with cuddle this works perfectly so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to mark one inch hold that back for me I'm going to mark one inch there there you go I'm going to do the same thing here and one inch from the edge of the cuddle from the edge of the cuddle so that's what I'm marking which should be basically where my batting lands yes right so I want to do that and then I'm going to go ahead and I need to mark it so the batting is also one inch from the line exactly so then I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to mark my 45 which I know if I follow this line out it should hit the corner okay so then I'm going to draw that line that becomes my stitching line and this is the really important part because people often want to cut it there it's not where you cut it don't cut it yet okay we're just going to mark it and then I'm going to pin it and sew it let me show you how that works so I'm going to fold it right sides together create this little corner up here and then because I do love my pins I'm actually going to use two of them for this little bitty seam and I'm going to put one on either side of well cuddle is a bit more slippery and so you want to you you know you want to make sure that you are the boss of it exactly yes you are the boss you got to tell it what to do so what I do is I put a pin on either side and this is my stitching line and I want to start sewing from the raw Edge to the fold and that way if it does slip on me it's to the ward the folds and it's not going to make a difference because this corner here becomes this corner here so they need to match okay so I'm gonna go ahead and sew that all right let's see that all right all right so I've got it set at a 3.5 Stitch length we're just going to do a straight seam so I'm going to go backward just so I can secure that seam because this is going to do a little back stitch back and forward you know a couple of stitches either way exactly and then I'm just going to stitch right across on that little line that I drew do another little back stitch and take it out take my take my pins out and now I've got this little seam right here I can go ahead and you can oh you're going to check it I'm going to check it I was going to say don't cut it before you check it I've learned that lesson oh my gosh so we're going to go ahead and flip it how cool that is it worked out great so now I'm going to cut that bulk off because it is a little right a little extra bulky in there and I cut it at about half inch seam allowance maybe a little less let me go ahead and flip that poke it out push your batting into the corner yep push the batting up into the corner fabric pull that just a little and then I'm going to go ahead and I would boost my healing this is and so you're just going to pin these now so then I would just pin this down and what I'm going to do is I'm going to look and make sure that it matches that line that I drew because I know that's where I want my seam allowance to be now I tend to be one of those Quilters that like rushes to the finish line and you really with with cuddle you want to just take it take your time take your time um because it probably isn't very fun to pick out it isn't no no so you want to take your time and go ahead and use the pins go ahead and make sure that you're yeah you know that it's all lined up and where you want it and take the time yeah take the time because I always like to I always tell people like pin now because unstitching later is really unful it's not on fun I like that yeah so take your time make sure that it and then where you want it really has just zigzagged around all the way around which is what she'll do yep that is so cool and go ahead I will show you how to do it so you can actually do it with like a serpentine Stitch if you've got that on your machine but I really prefer the zigzag just because it's super fast and easy so quick so as much as you have to take your time too right you can also you know do the quick and easy approach which is just I do love that so she's going to zigzag some of this now yep so I'm going to change my Stitch to a zigzag and I'm going to go ahead and make my zigzag bigger so I'm going to do a three and a half four whatever you'd like to do okay we're going to go ahead and Stitch this can I have my stiletto oh yes you can I love that little thing and what it does is it helps me hold the fabric where I want it to be I can kind of take the pin out and just hold it there and then I'm just going to zigzag right along that edge I'm going to make sure that it's the needle is coming down just on the left of it I'll just plod right along and usually what I do is I do one side at a time depending on how big the quilt is I just love and you've got you're almost to that little mitered corner which is just the perfect little perfect miter Corner little corner it's so easy to do and kind of foolproof truthfully cut a few of those off that I've had to go oh I've actually sewn a piece back on one time which did you really which is also interesting because it really doesn't show because the cuddle is so forgiving right exactly so forgiving so I'm just going to go ahead so I just pivot and turn it the corner there and then just keep on going just work my way all the way around so you're just going to do that all the way I'm going to leave one little spot open so I can show it off later that is great if you take that out and then you can see it's going to come right along this line and I can go ahead and I just go ahead and fluff it all up it hides all those little stitches get this little thread as you can see this is what we were talking about choosing a thread and a lot of times I will pick a medium gray just like this because it will kind of blend into everything that is it just hides all right now say say because I put with a credit card yes you know I send myself in to be quilted and I love the way the quilt thing looks on them say you want to do it at home you want to try it on your own home machine yeah and so we have one that has been kind of laid and put together here yep we've used this dimple on the back and uh so the steps we'd have to go through to get it ready to quilt let's look at this all right so this is our same quilt that we showed you earlier the little baby quilt but now we've got this graphite dimple dimple and the uh the the pattern will still show up in this yes yeah it does um it does kind of they play with each other differently it won't show up quite the same because you end up having kind of the two different designs but it does work does work just fine so then how do you how do you ready a quilt if you're going to do this on a home machine so you're going to make your quilt top just like you would right normally you're going to press that really well then what I do is I start with the backing and I put my batting onto that okay and I think we have a little we have we have one we can uh temporary adhesive yep so we use the temporary adhesive we can actually show with a little sample I'll show you how to put the whole thing together let's not let's not do that on that just to go that's what we have this big white thing for right let's cover up our spray so I like to use the od505 okay spray I like it a lot because it doesn't smell and it doesn't um it doesn't get really sticky stuff on other things like so it doesn't stay sticky it's not going to ruin your needle that's a question I get a lot it's going to make your needle sticky nice it isn't it's great it doesn't smell and it washes out so when you're done the sticky is gone oh that's great so if this were my quilt I've got the backing one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to check the nap so the Selvage is here so I know that the nap is going to run along the Selvage so I can pet it and pet it yeah and I can see okay this is the way my nap goes so I'm going to switch this around and this is just my personal is I always put the top of the top and I can oh okay I can keep track of it so the top of my quilt is well and those mantras are good because otherwise it's easy to get it confused yeah and then in the end your your nap is upside down which is really not going to matter anyway but you know best practices yeah so then what I do is and you would do this on a space that is large enough for your quilt so like this baby quilt you would want to have a table this big if you want to do it on a large like an 80 inch wide if you want to do it on your home machine you want to get like pop-up tables and do it out you know big you know what I do which is interesting is I tape I have I know the middle of my table and I tape a quarter on there and then every time I fold this I put it this right on the quarter because I can feel that lift a little bit and so then it's always centered on everything well isn't that clever and it's because I didn't have you know big floor space right you know whatever but but that's a great technique because it wouldn't just this tiniest little feel yeah and it just keeps it right there that's awesome so you lay out your whole backing you're going to lay your batting on here which should be a little bit smaller and then what I do is I just spray this on here and I'm going to stick it down and I'm going to do a little pad and I always do it in half so even though this is small enough I could do it at one Fell Swoop I do it in half so that it stays where I want it to be as soon as I pick the whole thing up and spray it I don't know where I'm putting it down again so I do this and the pad is actually kind of important it won't stick as well until you Pat Pat Pat Pat yeah all right and then you're going to do the same thing you're going to put your quilt block out or your quilt top out you're going to make sure that it's nice and pressed I just have to say this is probably one of the most boring quilts I've ever it is the most boring quilt ever but wait until we long so I do the same thing just put a little bit of spray based on there right a little harder there you go yeah there we go get out some of the like the directions yeah so we're going to spray it again there you go okay try the whole thing this time the pat pat there you go now if you lay this getting in the group I'm getting in a group go ahead sorry if you're gonna do a big quit like this it's really easy to kind of get a wrinkle in it so one of the things that's cool about this stuff is that you can actually just kind of lift it up separate it put it back down pat it and it's back there that is actually very cool okay so that's actually really helpful is that the spray based it it isn't permanent when you stick it down it's not going to stay there forever so knowing that like if I get a wrinkle I just pull it back up so obviously we can't fit this quilt under our throat over here but um you could do a little quilt on there totally and um and if you know if you just have you have to look at so well let me let me just back up and ask you this when you home quilt it do you start from one side and go to the other do you start in the middle I start in the middle and work my way out yeah that's exactly right and generally what I what I'll do is I'll start here and then I kind of quarter it and then do it in between and then do you like roll this part up so that it can go under the under the throat okay yeah that's what I did it does a difference you know so I just wanted to find out you know because sometimes you learn these amazing tricks right yeah you just never even thought I love the jumbo Wonder clips for holding that I'll like roll it up and then I kind of Click oh very and those work really well yeah it's it's easy enough to do smaller quilts on your domestic machine but honestly I quote my credit there we go all right so now that we know how to do this and we can actually transfer that to a bigger quilt are there any other little tips that you have that might help us you really just want to take your time with it enjoy the process of making use it you've covered everything yep use a walking foot polyester thread it really is it's just such a lovely finish it is it's just an amazing finish so when you get it all done how washable is this totally washable you can just throw it in the washer throw it in the washer and dryer make sure that you're using a low heat for it so that's the only thing is the high heat can sort of damage it because it's polyester or fabric well sure so use a lower heat dryer but otherwise absolutely washable dryable all of that good stuff I love that I love that especially for baby quilts because they get used a lot yeah you know and you want to be able to throw them in the washroom exactly well that's awesome it's been a pleasure having you here today I hope this takes away some of your fear on using cuddle on the back because it is an amazing backing for quilt so lovely and so much easier than we think you know it it there's a little bit of a Fear Factor factor to it but you know be bold go for it that's right do it because you're going to love the results you are going to love the results and so anyway thanks for being with us today and we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on putting cuddle on the back of a quilt from the Missouri Star Quilt Company hi everybody it's Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company we hope you enjoyed watching this video if you aren't already part of the Missouri Star Quilt Company family be sure to subscribe so you won't miss a thing and if you click that Bell it'll notify you every time a new tutorial comes out see you next Friday [Music] foreign