Hand Quilting Cord Motifs, a Free Video Tip

Bring out the beauty of your designs and overall quilts by cording the motifs! In this free video lesson, Andi Perejda (instructor of Hand-Quilting Heirloom Design and Technique, right here on Bluprint), shows you how to do that, step-by-easy step!

Video transcript:

Hi, I’m Andi Perejda, and I’m a quilting instructor for Bluprint.com. I have a quick tip today on how to cord a motif in hand-quilting.

So we start out with a design drawn on paper. We have a stamp here that’s drawn with three leaves. And now what we’re going to do is transfer this design to a very lightweight cotton fabric. It’s a batiste in this case. And draw it with a pencil directly on the fabric.

The fabric is placed on the back of your quilting cotton. And then small leaves are cut out of batting and laid in place underneath the batiste. These are basted in with fairly large basting stitches to hold them in place so they don’t move. But the corded area, or the stem, is actually quilted with a normal hand-quilting stitch so it shows on both sides, and then we cord it. You can use a quilter’s bodkin to pierce a small hole just in the top fabric, in the batiste. And then take a tapestry needle that’s been threaded with white yarn—this is a cotton and poly yarn—and simply, carefully move it through the channel that’s been hand-quilted. All the way across, if possible. If not, you can pop out in the middle, bring it through, and leave a tail here at the end, and sort of flatten it out. Then go back in through the hole you came out, and bring it all the way to the other end, coming just up into that leaf at the base. Pull it through again. It takes a little bit of work to get it going. Hold this other pre-corded area down tightly with your thumb, and bring it in, and smooth it out. And then you can snip this end off, and it’s all corded and ready to go.

Here’s a piece that I’ve been working on. It’s a different design altogether. But you can see how the work progresses on the back of your quilt top. Also, you can see this design in “Wigged Out on the West coast,” which is a finished quilt of mine. And I hope you’ve enjoyed this little demo on cording fabric.

So check out my class, Hand-Quilting Heirloom Design and Technique, on Bluprint.com.