Before I actually started piecing my first quilt, I did a bunch of prep work. Since I was new and I wasn’t sure how I was going to take to it, I went cheap. I read up about these magical things called layer cakes and fat quarters, but I had no way of buying them in Israel.<\/p>\n
Ali Express to the rescue. You can get a lot of fabric in China. In a lot of cases, shipping to Israel is actually free. The prices are amazing. The quality isn’t great, but it’s certainly workable just to play around with.<\/p>\n
Things in China work in centimeters and meters, not yards and inches. Truth be told, the metric system is much smarter. All the tutorials that I found on YouTube used yards and inches. I actually prefer using yards and inches. I grew up in the US and it just comes more naturally to me.<\/p>\n
I bought a bunch of squares that were 10cm x 10cm, 10cm x 20cm, 30cm x 40cm. They were sizes that didn’t match what I saw online for quilting, but they worked for me. I still have some in my stash which I will use eventually.<\/p>\n
Ali Express even has batting. It’s really not the best quality. It works in a pinch, but I would stay away from it unless I was completely desperate.<\/p>\n
The first thing I did was practice sewing 1\/4 inch seams. I didn’t have a foot for quilting and there were no markings on the machine. That’s were washi tape came in really handy. I marked the 1\/4 inch mark on the machine and that was my guide.<\/p>\n
Then I went back on Ali Express and purchased a 1\/4 inch quilting foot.<\/p>\n
It take time to get stuff from China. Things can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months. While waiting, I just played with fabric that we had in the house and watch a lot of videos.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, most of the stuff came quickly, and I was on my way…<\/p>\n
There is actually a quilt store in Israel called Pissott. It’s in Tzomet Bilu. If I were to start again, I would probably start there. They have the good batting that I use in all my quilts. They also sell batting at Bod Ratz in Jerusalem. I’ll talk more about Pissott and Bod Ratz in future posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before I actually started piecing my first quilt, I did a bunch of prep work. Since I was new and I wasn’t sure how I was going to take to it, I went cheap. I read up about these magical things called layer cakes and fat quarters, but I had no way of buying them … <\/p>\n