Quick Project Ideas

The HQ Watch and Learn show that premiered on Nov 21, 2023 featured great quick project ideas to help you finish up your gift list in no time.

Kim shares time-saving tips for quilted projects. So be sure to watch the video. You’ll be inspired to create some wonderful things, quick and easy.

One Backing – Multiple tops

Loading the backing for a quilt takes a little time. You can save time by loading one backing and quilting multiple quilts. I wrote about this back in Nov 2020 and you can read the post here for all the details.

Baby quilts

In the video Kim quilts 2 baby quilts side-by-side after loading one backing. The hopping foot of the machine in the photo is over the batting space between the 2 quilt tops.

The really cool thing she did was set up 2 Pro-Stitcher edge-to-edge designs and made them continuous. So that each quilt would have its own unique design, but it would stitch continuous rows across both quilts! That saves even MORE time. Here are the designs set up on her Pro-Stitcher screen:

Piecing on the Longarm

Save time by doing your actual piecing on the longarm frame. There’s a blog post about that technique too. Read it here.  Kristina has also shown piecing techniques on other HQ Watch and Learn episodes. Search our YouTube channel to see them.

Some ideas for piecing on your frame include Jelly roll quilts,

Crazy quilts, placemats, (Read how to make them here)

and raw edge applique.

Create Quilted Fabric

Lots of projects call for quilted fabric. Put your longarm to good use to quilt up yardage, or pieced fabrics. Then take them off the frame and cut your pieces for your projects. Some of the suggestions Kim and Kristina had were: holiday stockings, casserole carriers, tote bags of all sorts, garment bags, goodie bags, bowl cozies,

stuffed animals,

and a sewing machine cover.

A pro-tip that was mentioned: be mindful of the scale of your quilting. Make sure it matches the scale of the project you intend to use the quilted fabric for.

Fabric Panels

Need a quick quilt? Take a fabric panel, add some borders, if you want, (or not) and quilt it up. Voila! I know I have a stash of fabric panels just waiting to be quilted. How about you?

Combined tips with my own twist

Panel quilting and quilting multiple projects on a single backing made these Santa placemats fast and easy.

I used a printed panel with the Santa image. Loading one batting (just like a backing), I quilted all the placemats, then covered them with one backing. I quilted the circle outline of the placemats, leaving an opening so I could turn them right side out. That meant I only had to sew the opening closed. No binding! After all, who wants to bind multiple placemats? That would take For-Ever! Get all the steps here.

Which one of these ideas will you try first? Share in the comments!

Quilt Every Day!

by Mary Beth Krapil