As I was learning to free motion quilt on my domestic machine, and now on my longarm, I discovered (the hard way) that unpicking lots of stitches is a P.I.T.A. (yep, that is pain in the a$$).
So I looked around and found a few really cool tips to remove them easily, AND with minimal swearing! Woohoo! (original video referenced down the bottom of this article)
So I thought I would do a quick video to show our longarm customers how to quickly remove the basting stitches from their quilts!
Basically you snip or unpick the thread and then grab the top thread in one hand. Tug on it a little bit and the bottom, bobbin thread, will come up. Use your unpicker to cut that. Keep pulling on the top thread, the next bit of bobbin thread will come up. Snip it. Keep on repeating!
When you get to the end or where you want to stop, cut your top thread. It will be in one nice long piece. Then you can go back over the top of your quilt and pick the bits of bobbin thread that are poking through. You are done!
Have a go the next time you need to pick out quilting stitches, you might be surprised at how easy it goes!
Basting stitches will obviously be easier being larger stitches, but the same process applies, you just need to be a little more careful snipping the bobbin thread that is pulled up with smaller stitches to make sure you are just snipping the bobbin thread and not the top thread.
I think the original video that I saw this in was one from Natalia Bonner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cmSC0BxsrQ scoot through to about 1min 40 seconds to get to the good bit!
Great tip!
Thanks Yvonne! Yes, it has made the horrible job of unpicking sooooo much easier!