Speed Unpicking With a Rotary Cutter!

This is for anyone who has machine quilted an entire quilt, made a mess of it and then spent weeks trying to unpick the stitches... 

I made this quilt top for my son 3 years ago and it's been sitting in my UFO cupboard for two years following two unsuccessful attempts to machine quilt it. I've always hand quilted large quilts before and this was the first time I'd machine quilted something so big. I first used a domestic machine but wasn't happy with the result and unpicked the lot in the conventional way (it took weeks). Then I had a go on a friend's long arm machine which was even worse and so put the quilt away rather than face unpicking it for a second time.
But browsing the net today I found a clever and speedy way to unpick a quilt in hours rather than weeks using a ROTARY CUTTER...



Turn the quilt over to the back and lay it on a large flat surface. Take a blunt rotary cutter (one that you keep for paper cutting etc) and angle it down towards the batting. At the same time pull the backing away from the batting to reveal the stitches. Press the rotary cutter down onto the stitches and into the batting, making sure not to cut the the backing fabric. Keep pulling the backing back as you cut the stitches. Work across the whole of the quilt rather than one line of stitches. It's like taking the skin off a fish!
I did the whole quilt in just over an hour and removed the little threads from the top using a piece of masking tape.
This must be the quilting tip of the year!


Comments

  1. Replies
    1. Yes, of course. It seems so obvious now that I wondered if everyone already knew about it. When I saw it on the net I couldn't work out how the rotary cutter did it until I saw the video.

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  2. Brilliant! Thank you for the tip!

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  3. I have just been directed to this amazing hint by Carla! I am definitely trying this.... I will link back here when I post about it! Thanks again!

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