Leaders/Enders are a great way to accomplish a lot of quilting without really seeming like you are actually working on it. Beside my sewing machine are some piles of pre-cut fabric to make specific units. On the bottom are the pieces partially put together for a spool, my main leader/ender quilt. On the upper left hand side are the spool pieces waiting for their turn to be made, and on the right hand side is the second leader/ender that I am starting for when I do not have any spool parts cut up.
How it works is I will be working on piecing blocks for a quilt, currently my spider web quilt seen in the picture below. When I finish a block and need to take it out of the machine, instead of cutting the threads, I would put one part of the block pieces through to make a spool. This saves on time, thread and gets an otherwise monotonous task, of the 544 spool blocks that I need, done.
See the leader/ender still in the machine? That is the ender of the spider web block, so that I could cut off the block, and now it becomes the leader for when I am ready to start another spider web block. The piece in the machine is part of the Bonnie's Celtic Solstice Mystery quilt that I have decided to do in Xmas fabrics. I was able to get 12 done at the same time as I worked at the spider web quilt. I am so glad that Bonnie had this technique posted on her site at https://quiltville.com/index.html. I get so much more out of the time I spend quilting. Visit her site. She is amazing and has many free tutorials and patterns.
Below is a sneak peak of a set of four spider web blocks sewn together. I will talk about this one and another spider web quilt I made tomorrow.
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