Good morning, friends! I am shocked to be able to share this finish with you today, because I was fiercely procrastinating coming back to it. I decided to load it up on the frame, fire up the long arm machine and JUST DO IT. Behold, my friend Marybeth's oldest UFO, a hand pieced sampler quilt that she started in 1984 for her (now adult) son's "Big Boy Bed." When Marybeth showed me the blocks a year or two ago I begged her to finish the project and promised that, if she put the blocks into a quilt top, I would custom quilt it for her.
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| Marybeth's circa 1984 Sampler Quilt, Custom Quilting Completed |
Not gonna lie; this project was a challenge for me. I've quilted hundreds and hundreds of quilts with edge to edge, allover quilting, but less than a dozen custom quilts on my long arm machine. This one was a combination of digital computerized designs, hand guided ruler work quilting, and free motion quilting, and I quickly realized that I have a lot to learn when it comes to quilting computerized designs in borders and sashing. Knowing that this quilt was really special to Marybeth and irreplaceable, I got into my own head too much with the Analysis Paralysis... I am ashamed to confess that I have had this quilt for EIGHT MONTHS before finally finishing it and sending it back to Marybeth!
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| Wish I'd Used More Contrasting Thread |
I've got a lot of Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda notes for this quilt. Like, I wish I'd used the pale straw yellow thread in that green dotted fabric patch in the photo above, so you could see the quilting motifs in the "lawn" patch. I wish I'd done a better job of keeping the amount of quilting more consistent throughout the quilt, too -- notice how the quilting lines in the red and blue block below the house are so much farther apart than in the house block, for instance. If this had been my own quilt, I would have gone back in and added more quilting to the red and blue block to solve that issue, but I know that Marybeth prefers the look and feel of LESS quilting and I'm already worried that I may have "overquilted" it for her preferences.
Other notes to self: Even with digital designs, and maybe especially with digital designs, sashing and borders would be so much easier to quilt if I'd marked reference points (center, quarter points, diagonal miter lines etc) on them before loading the quilt. And, before choosing digital border or sashing designs in the future, I will evaluate the straightness of borders and sashings nect time. I found it really difficult to adjust the mathematically perfect digital border and sashing designs to fit the actual borders and sashings of this quilt without drawing attention to piecing imperfections that were less noticeable prior to quilting, and I know that ruler work quilting designs (like the straight lines I quilted in the red border) or free motion quilting would have been not only faster to quilt, but also would have been much easier to adapt to follow the piecing seam lines in the quilt. |
| 60 1/2 x 88 inch Marybeth's Sampler Quilt, 1984-2025 |
And yet, there's a lot about this quilt that I learned and got right! I'm glad I chose a lightweight thread, So Fine 50 weight matte polyester, for the feather border because the backtracking (spots in the design where the quilting machine travels over a previously stitched line) are much more inconspicuous in a lightweight thread. I like the contrast between the straight line piano key design I stitched on the red border between the feathers in the outer purple border and the squiggles and circles in the purple sashing. I think I did a nice job of balancing different quilting motifs throughout the sampler blocks for continuity and, while I personally might have liked a contrasting thread so my quilting would show up more, I did choose to color match thread deliberately most of the time so that the emphasis in the finished quilt would be Marybeth's hand piecing and appliqué. The quilting was meant to play a supporting role and not be the main focus of attention.
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| Everything Looks Better From a Distance |
Deciding how to quilt each of these blocks was challenging because they are all so different and I was trying to create a sense of unity with the quilting designs. I might have been more successful with that had I quilted the whole thing without any computerized designs, repeating free motion motifs from the appliqué backgrounds in different areas of the patchwork blocks. But I'm glad I took the time up front to do all of that painstaking quilting in the ditches of the patchwork seams and around appliqué. And I'm glad I took the quilt off the frame and repinned it sideways before quilting those long borders on the sides of the quilt all in one pass, without stops and starts every time I advanced the quilt.
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| Quilt Turned Sideways to Stitch Side Borders in One Pass |
I had considered finishing this quilt for Marybeth as my OMG (One Monthly Goal) for June, but now I've gone and messed that up by finishing in May. Gotta tell you, it felt fantastic to box this up and ship it back to Marybeth. Also, HUGE note to self -- all of those little imperfections that seemed so glaring to me when I was inspecting the quilt under bright lights on the frame with my nose 6" away from the fabric? They disappear when the quilt comes off the frame and you take a few steps back.
Here's what Marybeth's quilt top looked like before I started quilting it:
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| Marybeth's 1984 UFO Sampler Before Quilting |
The next quilt loaded onto the long arm will be my Deco quilt, but I'm not in a rush to do that. My Stonefields project is calling me right now!
I'm linking up with my favorite linky parties:
MONDAY
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Monday Musings at Songbird Designs
TUESDAY
To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt
WEDNESDAY
Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter
THURSDAY
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation
FRIDAY
Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts
Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre
Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty
TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday
SUNDAY
Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué
Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework
9 comments:
Marybeth will be so pleased! Now she can pass it onto a grandchild. Enjoy starting Stonefields, I hope to see weekly progress about it. Happy stitching!
Wow! It's absolutely beautiful, and I just know your friend is going to love it! Congratulations on finishing early and doing such a beautiful job -- unsurprised as I am about that last bit. :)
Marybeth's quilt is beautiful! Will she give it to her son, in spite of it originally being for his "Big Boy Bed"? I'm always glad to see a longtime UFO finished, just makes me happy. :D Your quilting is lovely. Superior So Fine #50 is what I use for all my piecing and some of my quilting. Just as a general rule, what do you recommend for each - piecing and quilting?
Hi, Linda! I know lots of quilters today enjoy using the lightweight poly threads for piecing, like So Fine or Bottom Line or that new Quilting Arts thread from Alex Anderson. I still prefer to stick with cotton thread for piecing, because the general rule of cotton thread with cotton fabric, poly thread with poly fabric makes sense to me -- but more importantly, I don't have any issues piecing with cotton thread that switching to polyester would solve for me. My favorite thread for intricate precision piecing is Aurifil's 50 weight 2-ply thread on the orange spool, because it takes up a little less space in the seams (similar to So Fine, I'd imagine). When I'm foundation paper piecing and I know that I'm going to go back and stress those seams when I tear the paper away, I switch to Mettler or Gutermann 50 weight 3-ply thread instead.
More important than which type/brand of thread is used for piecing is the color of the thread and the stitch length, in my opinion and experience. One thing that always makes my heart sink when I'm quilting for other people is when they have used a too-long stitch length and a contrasting thread color like gray thread between a dark red and a dark purple fabric. Once that quilt is on the long arm frame under slight tension to smooth out any wrinkles/fullness areas and prevent pleats in the quilting, those seams will pull open just enough that you can see those threads and it really detracts from the finished quilt. The only solutions at that point are for the quilt maker to hand stitch those seams closed as invisibly as possible with matching thread after quilting or to hand color the offending thread to blend in with a permanent Pigma marker, but sometimes there is batting showing where the seam pulled open as well and there's nothing for that but to hand stitch the seam closed. Much better to use a small stitch length of 2.0 throughout the quilt to begin with and take a moment to switch thread colors occasionally so you're never sewing with thread that is lighter or darker than the two fabrics you're stitching together.
For quilting, I like ALL the threads!!! It depends on the desired aesthetic and intended use of the finished quilt, how heavily I'm planning to quilt, whether I want to see the quilting thread and stitches or just the texture of the quilting design, whether there will be any backtracking (stitching multiple times over the same line of stitching) in any of the quilting designs, whether the quilt is a wall hanging or a baby quilt or a King bed quilt for adults... My top favorite quilting threads are Superior's King Tut variegated 40 weight cotton, YLI's 40 Tex variegated Machine Quilting Cotton, Aurifil's 40/3 Long Arm Quilting cotton thread (only sold on big yellow cones, NOT the same as their lighter weight 40/2 thread sold on green cones and green spools), Superior's So Fine 50 wt polyester, Glide 40 wt trilobal polyester embroidery thread, and Aurifil's invisible monofilament thread for stitching in the ditch and for T-shirt quilts.
This is such a great story and your mind will be so much more light and free now that you have it done! Honestly, your time and effort that you put into this quilt shines though! Great job!! And I’d like to know where it ends up!
Wow!! You did a fabulous job on that project - in spite of the second guessing you're doing. Beautiful!!
it turned out great. I bet you are glad to get done with it as it did take you a bit of time to do it. It looks great
A beautiful finish! I love the motif in the border! Congratulations!
Lovely, lovely finish! Yes, when you are right on top of it, so many things seem less than perfect but step away and it all comes together in the end. As I read you initial druthers about not using contrasting thread and then looked at an enlarged picture of the finished quilt, I came to the same conclusion you did later in the post --- the same color thread balanced out the amount of quilting done and I think it will make Marybeth very happy with the results. Great job and lesson in combining computerized and FM quilting in one project, I'm taking notes!
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