What Are Leader Enders in Quilting?

So a few weeks ago Paul and I had a discussion on the way home about what leader and enders are in quilting.  Then last week someone posted in the Facebook group asking the same thing.  I realized that maybe someone was trying to tell me there are people out there who don't get what I or others mean when we say leader ender.  It really is a fairly simple concept once you see it, I think.

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One of the reasons we do leader and enders is so that we never break the chain when piecing.  The goal is only to break the chain when you need to rethread your machine on when working on something that doesn't allow chain piecing.  I explain a lot of it in the video below.




The video basically covers Paul and I's conversation.  Of course, he had to fire some more questions at me to try to stump me. The first was how much thread are you really saving?  I just looked at him, he honestly expected me to know exactly how many yards of thread you saved with each project.  I don't know the answer to that because it all depends on how much thread you pull out at the end.  We'll just say you pull 3 inches each time.  It takes 6 broken chains to equal a yard of thread.  He's next snarky question was "What about when you oil the machine?"  Oh he thought he had me because oil can drip down the needle when you let the machine sit for overnight it can drip down on the needle and ruin the fabric under the needle. That's when I reminded him about the scrap fabric.  If I have oiled my machine for the first day or so I leave scrap fabric under the needle.

In the video I mentioned Bonnie Hunter's leader ender challenge.  This year she is doing Jewel Box Stars.  It's four patches and half square triangles so it will be an easy one if you are just getting started with the method of leader and enders in quilting.  I don't do anything planned.  I will usually use my next project like I talked about in the past in how I get multiple projects done at one time.

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