Week 24?? Wow, someone told me the other day only 6 months till Christmas Day! On the other hand, only two terms to go of this stupid half days of kindy set up Grace is in. Mumble, mumble, such a PITA!Anyway, deep breaths Helen, quilting, whats been happening in quilting land this week? Swirls, swirls and lots of swirls! I decided that for the boarder of Elliott's quilt I would do lots of S shaped swirls, free motion, all different sizes. That in itself only took a few days but the fun part of tying all the threads! Well! That has taken just as long as the whole quilt. Now I don't know if I do it the crazy way or the proper way, it is the long way but if any one has a better way, please let me know! Here is the Helen way:
After all swirls have been quilted, snip the thread so you have anywhere from 3 cms upwards of thread left. Using a hand held needle, push the thread through the quilt so its on the back with its matching thread. So you have a mess of threads which looks like the above picture. Then knot then, and again using the hand held needle, sew them into the wadding horizontally to hide them, snip off any remaining bits that aren't in the wadding, aim to have at least 2 cms in there so they don't pop back out. And this has to be done at the start and finish of every swirl. I have about 50 to 70 swirls on each boarder, am about half way around.....
So every night this week has been sitting on the couch doing this, relaxing and at times theraputic! I only have myself to blame as I could have choosen a simplier pattern, even one big swirl, but I thought this would look good. Its my most adventurous quilting yet so I'm happy with that.
9 comments:
Just a thought; if it's hand-quilting, why not pass the thread between the sandwich layers at the end of each swirl to the start of the new one instead of cutting the thread, thus saving oodles of starting and finishing-off???
The swirls themselves are done on the machine. I then hand sew the end threads down to the back after I have quilted a whole panal, KWIM?
Helen, I probably would do it the same way - in fact I think that's how I tidied up the threads on the baby quilt I made Austy. Time consuming, but worth it as they stay tucked inside. But then again, I've only made one quilt!!!
Oh wow - this si looking good - have fun threading all the little pieces through - it is the little things that finish it off isn't it!
Your swirlies are very cute! I have no words of wisdom on burying your thread ends, though, as I refuse to do it: I backstitch at starts and stops and trim threads as I go....
The only thing I could offer would be to take a couple of really tiny stitches at the beginning and the end as an anchoring stitch rather than a backstitch and trim close.
It looks fantastic though and will be worth all the effort!
I love the swirls Helen!
They might be alot of work but they look great and if its therapeutic and you can do it in front of the tv then it cant be too bad can it???
Want to know the "Andrea" way to do it? - I did swirly wiggly quilting all over a 2m (yes 2 metres!) square quilt a few years back ... used cheap thread and had lots of dangly bits where the thread broke while machine quilting it ... and I had done my usual thing and entered it in the quilt show but not got around to finishing it until very soon before I had to deliver it ... so I used one of those self threading needles (wonderful things those - perfect for sewing in dangly ends!) and I pulled all the threads from the front through to the back ... with the idea of then hiding them in the batting later on - so the quilt hung in the quilt show with all the dangly threads on the back - LOL
... and ... a few years later, the quilt gets used on the bed sometimes (in summer when it is too hot for the wool doona and too cool for just a sheet/cotton blanket) and yes - it still has all those dangly bits of thread hanging out the back!
(if I was making a quilt to give to someone, I would probably use the self threading needle to hide all the ends inside before I gave it to them ... although I have made a couple small art quilts for Mum and Dad and all I did was pull the ends to the back and trim them off short - I figured the back did not have to look good because they will spend most of their time hanging on a wall ;-)
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