Sunday, October 10, 2010

Blogtoberfest Day 10 - Swirly Quilting.

Yesterday was my once a month meeting of fellow quilter's. About 5 hours later and 5 bobbins of white thread later, I had finished the quilting on this.

The centers of the flowers are really popping up now. More than I would have liked. So I am now going to go just a little quilting in yellow around the outside of them. They look a bit funny.

I have been exchanging emails with Jan for awhile and the other day she asked what I meant but sewing in the threads on the back. It was too hard to explain by email, so I told her I would take some photos so hopefully it made more sense. So, when you have finished quilting, take your needle and sew the top thread through to the back.

So when you flip it over you have both the top thread and the bobbin thread there. Trim threads to 2 - 3 inches if you like. Now you want to get your needle and run it horizontally inbetween the wadding and the backing fabric, taking care not to run it through the top layer of the quilt, just flip it over to the front to have a look before you poke the needle all the way through. I've run my needle about an inch in the above photo. Then pull the needle through with both the threads in it. Then when they have come through the other end, snip them off. This way they are tucked in the quilt nicely and the stitching won't come unraveled. Time consuming if you have a lot of threads but it does leave a nice finish.

10 comments:

Nic Wood said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nic Wood said...

This looks stunning! Thanks for the pics of stitching in the threads, I had been trying to get my head around that too - so much easier to understand after seeing the pics!

nic xxx

ps, excuse the deleted post above, I posted with out reading it back and it was FULL of typos!

Cass said...

Lovely quilting Helen

Stephanie Hughes said...

Helen, love the quilt and great explaination of how to hide threads. Steph

Sarah Craig said...

So beautiful, Helen - as always! I love your little swirlies.....

carol said...

Your quilting is truly gorgeous!!!! That must be a big quilt for 5 bobbins full of thread. Wow!

AJ said...

That's how I do it too! Lovin' the swirls!

Vicki said...

It's beautiful! I was taught to just do 3-4 small, close stitches at the beginning of my quilting, and then just cut the threads off. It's what I still do, and I haven't had a problem with quilting stitches coming undone. :)

Jan said...

Hi Helen. Thank you so much for that explanation. I can always rely on you to further my sewing education.
Maybe you can teach sewing in the school up where you are?
Great quilting by the way and I like how the flowers pop.

Barb said...

lovely quilting!