Tip Tuesday! Hanging Quilts

In case you missed it, check out yesterday's post for information about a recent very special announcement.

"Tip Tuesday!" - Hanging Quilts

I love learning new things and then sharing that knowledge with my quilting friends. So, every Tuesday I'll provide some tips, hints, tricks, tutorials, shortcuts, etc. that I've learned over the years and share them here on the blog. 

"Tip Tuesday" will be a collection of information about a wide variety of subjects garnered from a large variety of sources.  I am not an expert by any means and do not take credit for being the great wizard behind all of these hints and tips. I will gladly give due credit whenever possible.

These tips will be archived and accessible to you just by clicking on the "Tip Tuesday" tab above. 

Read, enjoy, and be inspired!

************************************************

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of quilts hanging around my house.

Ever since I started quilting, I knew that I wanted to decorate with quilts and that included hanging them. The problem was (and at times still is), how do I hang the quilt? What kind of sleeve to I put on it? What do I do if the quilt will be used as a wall hanging at times, but also as a lap quilt? Do I add a sleeve or not? 

Out of curiosity, I took a quick count of the quilted wall hangings that are up right now and there are ten on the first floor alone. TEN!! I decided to not count the ones upstairs because I think it might be a bit embarrassing.

Here are a few of my favorite wall hangings, although none of these are up right now. :-)  As a matter of fact, a couple aren't even at the house right now. They are on an extended vacation at M & E Quilt Shoppe!  :-)

There is a sleeve and hanging rod here, you just can't see it.

There's obviously a sleeve here because you can see the hanging rod on both sides. (You can see it below in the picture of this from the back.) I don't love the look of being able to see the rod on many of my wall hangings anymore.

I've actually hung this backwards on purpose. I like how I pieced the back using left over fabrics from the front and I'm ok with the sleeve showing - sort of. It doesn't usually last too long when I hang it this way.  hehehe

You can still see the hanging rod with this patriotic quilt, but this is being hung with clips. There is a sleeve on this, but I like the clips better for this quilt.

This quilt is a little bit bigger than the rod length so it extends past the edges and you don't see the rod. :-) 

Usually my sleeves are made from the same fabric as the backing so it blends in in case I use the quilt for another purpose. But I also like the idea of using various fabrics from the front of the quilt so I have some on hand in case I need to make a repair.

For my small wall hangings, I've been using small corner tabs to hang them. remember this picture? This is the back of my Wonky Star wall hanging from the Dot to Dot Blog Hop back in 2012 

 

I like using this technique and have started putting the tabs in all four corners. That will allow me to rotate the quilt if it's not directional and to keep it "squared" while it's hanging. To do that, I add a dowel rod or something to the bottom as well as along the top.

I recently was sent a link for a You Tube video by Sew Very Easy about hanging quilts. It's quite interesting and I'm going to have to try this. Have you done this? If so, what are your thoughts?

Here's the video link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zB1PBQx6mgM