Deco Bed Quilt Going Back in Time Out Following Hand Quilting Experiments

Alright, I think I'm done with the hand quilting experiments on my Deco Bed Quilt and it's time for this project to get shoved back into a closet again -- after a quick recap for the benefit of Future Rebecca.

Hand Quilting in my Grace Square Lap Hoop

After trying both ways, hand quilting with and without a hoop, I definitely prefer the hoop.  It makes it so much easier to maintain consistent tension when you pull the thread through the fabric and it definitely makes it easier to mark quilting lines, if you feel like marking them.  I have had this Grace Square Lap Hoop for over twenty years, since I used it to hand quilt a much smaller throw size quilt for my husband.  My hoop is similar to this current Grace Hoop 2 from the Grace company, except that mine doesn't have that opening in the bottom that would let you attach it to a stand.  Here's the problem: my Deco quilt is a whopping 102" x 102", the quilt top fabrics are all those beefy Kona Solid fabrics, and I used a midweight Hobbs 80/20 black batting rather than one of the lower loft battings that are tailored for hand quilters.  These factors combined to create a tremendous weight and drag that felt cumbersome to me as I was conducting my hand quilting experiments on the sofa, and I was not keen on committing to spending a hundred or more hours wrestling with this giant quilt in my lap when I could be hand stitching appliqué or English paper piecing instead.  Enormous quilts like this one are why hand quilting FRAMES are a thing!  Now, I can see how the newer version of my hoop along with the optional stand would help manage the weight of a big quilt for hand quilting, but I'm not about to invest in a whole new hoop and stand setup for hand quilting at this time.  I would not be able to recline if my hoop was attached to a floor stand, the stand would be one more thing to store or to trip over next to the sofa, and I definitely wouldn't be lugging it around as a portable project.

Here's what the hand quilting was looking like so far:

Hand Quilting in Wonderfil 12 wt Fruitti Variegated Green Thread

I'm not giving up on the idea of ever hand quilting again, just not going to slog through trying to do it on such a big quilt.  So what you see pictured above in the green areas is 12 weight, 3-ply Wonderfil variegated cotton Fruitti in a variegated green color (this post contains affiliate links).  After trying different types and sizes of hand needles, I settled on a Bohin Size 7 Embroidery needle and I used the "stab stitching" method of using my non-dominant left hand on top of the quilt to push the needle down through the quilt, then my dominant right hand beneath the quilt grabbed the needle, turned it around and guided it (blind) back up through the quilt for my left hand to grab the needle.  This was initially awkward and clumsy, but it's amazing how quickly your fingers can learn what you want them to do with repetition.  After 30 minutes or so, the motions were becoming more automatic and I was getting a lot better at poking the needle up in the right spot on the first try.

End of February, Hello March: One Monthly Goal + Carrie's 2024 Philadelphia Temperatures Quilt Finish

Good morning, my lovelies!  It's the last day of February, time to take stock of what I did and didn't accomplish last month and make plans for the fresh, clean month ahead of me.  First, I'd like to share the quilt that I longarm quilted for my client Carrie.  This is the one I was having issues with thread breaking and shredding, prompting me to spend three days ripping out stitches and then requilt with a different kind of thread and a different quilting design, so I'm extremely relieved that it's done, off my plate, out of my house, and returned to Carrie:

Carrie's 60 x 76 Philadelphia Temperatures Quilt

If you're not familiar with "temperature quilts," the concept is to select fabrics across the color spectrum and assign one fabric color to each temperature range in a particular location, from the coldest temperatures of the year (the blues in Carrie's quilt) to the hottest temperatures (represented by the reds in this example).  Carrie has also used white and a silvery gray to represent snow or rain.  The edge-to-edge quilting design I used on this quilt was Whitney's Pearls Simple, which yields a similar look to the Raindrops On Water design we had originally selected, but without any backtracking quilting stitches that needed to stitch precisely over previously stitched lines of quilting.  Quilters Dream Wool batting is creating that beautiful dimensional texture without weight, making this a soft and snuggly quilt for cuddling despite the density of the quilting.  I used So Fine thread in color Genoa Gray.

Carrie Machine Embroidered Her Temperature Key At the Bottom

Carrie used foundation paper piecing to create the top border titling her quilt and machine embroidered her temperature key on the bottom border.  The many thick, overlapping seam allowances in the FPP top border may have been a contributing factor to the thread breaking constantly, but it wasn't the only culprit as the issue continued throughout the quilt.  I'm going to have my Bernina dealer out to check my hook for burrs before I attempt to quilt anything else.  

October OMG is Finished: Deco Custom Quilting (Substantially) Finished, Off the Frame

I've finished my OMG (One Monthly Goal) for October, three and a half weeks early!  I am as shocked as YOU are!  My entire 102" x 102" Deco bed quilt (pattern by Lo & Behold Stitchery, available on Etsy here) is now completely stitched in the ditch and all of the digital designs have been quilted as well.  (This post contains affiliate links).  I took one last photo in the Garish Yellow Quilt Studio as I was taking my quilt off the frame:

My 102 x 102 Deco Bed Quilt is Off the Frame!

Now that Deco is off the frame, I can start packing up all of my long arm quilting tools and supplies and Bernie and I can disassemble the frame and pack everything up for our upcoming move back to North Carolina.  However, although I completed what I set out to do on this quilt for this month, the quilt is not yet 100% quilted.  According to the batting manufacturer, I have more than enough quilting to hold the quilt together, but it's uneven quilting in that the digital quilting areas are quilted more densely, with lines of stitching much closer together, than the pieced blocks that are only stitched along seam lines between contrasting fabric patches.  It has always been my intention to complete this quilt with additional quilting in the pieced blocks.  However, it's "quilted enough" for me to feel comfortable taking it off the frame, folding it up, and packing it in a box for our move.

All SID (Stitch In the Ditch) + Digital Quilting Completed

My original plan was to reload this quilt on my long arm machine at the other end of the move to quilt the pieced blocks with decorative ruler work and free motion quilting, but then I got to thinking about how I've always wanted to play around with combining machine quilting and hand quilting on the same project, in different thread weights.  

Tuesday's To-Do List: Still Slogging Along With Butterflies and Clam Shells

 Might as well just get to the meat and potatoes this week!  Last week's goals turned out to be overly ambitious:

✅ finish quilting Modern Baby Clam Shells, AND 

✅ get it labeled and   

❌ bound, AND  

❌ get my Letter Home baby quilt top and ready to load on my frame.  

After quilting the pantograph design over most of my Modern Baby Clam Shells quilt and stitching in the ditch around my butterfly appliqués  a quilter who was more goal oriented and focused than I am would have finished up the quilting with some monofilament or color matched thread to machine quilt along the butterfly veins.  I decided to haul out all of my yummy hand stitching threads instead.  I ended up quilting my butterfly veins with Perle Cotton #5, which would probably have looked better with a longer stitch length, but I like it anyway:

Perle Cotton no. 5 for Hand Quilted Butterfly Veins

I like the idea of combining machine quilting with hand stitched details, and think I might explore more of that in future.  

Best of all, since my butterflies are turned edge appliqué with the backing trimmed away behind them and no fusible web or anything like that to add stiffness, they are super soft and smooshable and were very easy to needle for the hand quilting.

The purple butterflies got green stitching.  It's subtle, but I love the vintage hand stitched vibe it gives my butterflies.

All Quilting Completed, Ready to Trim

You know, I was really tempted to custom quilt this one, if I hadn't been up against a time crunch to get it finished.  But I have to say, the less densely quilted pantograph design makes this baby quilt SO soft and cuddly!  Custom quilting might have made for a stiffer quilt, and if I'd gotten too carried away with it, the baby's mom might have felt like the quilt was "too fancy" for everyday use and stuck it in a closet.  😱😱😱. Heaven forbid!  So all's well that ends well!

Attaching the Machine Embroidered Label

My bee group that used to meet in person Pre-Plague has been meeting on Zoom instead on Monday afternoons, and I used that time today to get this quilt trimmed and to attach the machine embroidered label I'd digitized and stitched out on Sunday.  I tried something new this time, using Aurifil 50/2 Cotton threads in the needle and also in the bobbin to embroider my quilt label.  I am really happy with how it came out!  That extra thickness to the thread (compared to regular embroidery thread and bobbin thread) gave the stitching more prominence, yet I had zero issues with puckering or thread breaks.  And although I love the sheen of trilobal polyester or rayon embroidery threads for other projects, I liked the matte lustre of the 100% cotton thread for this quilt.  I used one layer of water soluble topping, one layer of tearaway stabilizer in the hoop, with a second layer of tearaway stabilizer floated beneath the hoop.  I used my built-in basting stitch around the perimeter of the design as well, both to reduce the tendency of the embroidery to draw up and pucker, but also because the basting stitches form a nice, straight rectangle around the label design that I can use to trim the excess fabric and turn the two edges of the label that won't be caught in the binding.

My local chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild will be doing its first in-person stitch-together next Saturday, in the parking lot of the church where we usually meet, with masks and social distancing in place.  I'm planning to get the binding machine stitched to my clam shell quilt tomorrow and then set it aside to be finished with hand stitching at my guild's outdoor gathering. I sure hope the weather cooperates!

And then I can turn my attention back to the baby brother's quilt, based on the AQS Letter Home QAL.  So, that's what I'll be up to for the rest of this week!

Rebecca's To-Do List for This Week:

1. Attach binding to clam shell quilt by machine
2. Finish piecing Letter Home blocks
3. Assemble Letter Home quilt top
4. Piece Letter Home backing
5. Load Letter Home on the long arm frame

I'm tempted to put more on that list, but there's so much SHAME when I have to put red X's next to everything at the end of the week!  😉. Best to quit while I'm ahead!  I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

TUESDAY

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

Happy Fall, Y'All: Bernie's Sugar Shack Leaves Quilt circa 2004-2006

I know you're all tired of my snail's pace updates on my current projects, and Val's Archives Linky for this week is Fall Themed Projects, so I thought I'd share the Vermont-inspired Sugar Shack Leaves quilt that I made for my husband Bernie back in 2004-2006.  That was before I even knew what a blog was, so I haven't written about this one here before.

"Sugar Shack Leaves," 51" x 51", completed in 2006

The pattern for the leaf blocks came from Quilter's Newsletter Magazine Issue 357, "Shelly's Swirling Leaves, but I changed the borders.  I wanted to evoke the feeling of laying on our backs on that Vermont mountainside outside the sugar shack, surrounded by the forest at peak foliage season, with those brightly colored leaves floating down from a clear blue sky.  My version of the quilt was published in the Quilting Bee section of QN Issue 397, November 2007.

This was my third completed quilt, my first attempt at hand stitched applique (for the leaf stems), and my first and only hand quilted quilt.  It's only a throw sized quilt, but my boys were little at that time and I was only able to work on it in small snatches of time here and there so it took me about two years from start to finish.  Here you can see a much younger, exhausted version of myself working on the hand quilting back in 2005:

Hand Quilting In Progress, back in December 2005

How time flies!  That photo was taken in my in-laws' motor coach after we had spent the entire day in Disney World with toddlers.  Hence the dark circles under my eyes, general exhaustion, and "Really?  You need to take my picture NOW?!" look on my face.  But it's kind of neat now to have an "in progress" shot to share.  I'm using my square Grace lap hoop and my Roxanne thimble.

Hand Quilting Detail

This quilt wasn't really the best choice for showing off hand quilting.  You can't even see it unless you look up close, and my little random leaves quilted in the background look pretty lame to me now.  But it was relaxing hand work and I did enjoy it.  Maybe if I ever get around to setting my Jingle applique blocks, that one might be a good candidate for some hand quilting.

One more shot to share -- the machine embroidered quilt label:

That's it for today.  I'm linking up with Val's Tuesday Archives linky.  Have a great day!

Hand-Stitched Favorites from the 2013 North Carolina Quilt Symposium

Detail of a Quilt by Anne Francis

Anne Francis had some beautiful work in the North Carolina Quilt Symposium show, last weekend in Fayetteville,  including the penguin quilt shown here.  This quilt is covered with hundreds and hundreds of hand stitched French knot "snowflakes" that also secure the three layers of the quilt in lieu of traditional quilting stitches.    Spectacular!  I'm afraid I could not find a label near this one, so I don't know the title.


Another of Anne Francis's quilts that I enjoyed was A Harry Potter Story, made with the author's permission.  I made sure to get lots of pictures of this one for my Harry Potter aficionado sons. 


A Harry Potter Story, by Anne Francis

Look at the detail on Harry, with his embroidered lightning bolt scar, "Nimbus 2000" inscribed on his broomstick, and the fancifully hand embroidered Golden Snitch!

Detail of A Harry Potter Story, Entirely Handmade by Anne Francis

Harry Potter, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Hagrid, and the Hogwarts Castle were all carefully rendered by hand in applique and embroidery on this hand-pieced quilt.  Not a single machine stitch in the entire quilt. 

Dumbledore Detail from A Harry Potter Story, by Anne Francis

Isn't that amazing?  I was surprised to see so much hand work in this show, since most of the classes offered at this year's Symposium were geared toward machine quilting.  On the show floor, I saw quilt after quilt that had been hand pieced, appliqued, and hand quilted, in every style from traditional to contemporary to whimsical.  It's so interesting to see how artists working in the same medium (textiles and thread) and using the same techniques can create such completely different quilts.  I suppose I was mostly drawn to the appliqued quilts this time around since I'm immersed in my own first applique project. 



Detail of Papa's Album, by Sandra Russell

Look at the detail of hand applique with hand embroidered details and thousands of tiny, perfect hand quilting stitches in the Baltimore Album quilt pictured at left, which won first place for Best Hand Quilting.  Just marking the straight, parallel lines for the diagonal grid quilting would have been a challenge for me!

Papa's Album, by Sandra Russell

There were some beautiful machine quilts as well, and I'll show those to you tomorrow.  Or the next day.  Or when I get around to it...  ;-)

Only SEVEN more days of school before summer vacation!



I'm in Quilting Gallery's "Fall's Glory" Themed Quilt Contest This Week! Please Vote!

My Sugar Shack Leaves Quilt, 51" x 51"

Happy Fall Friday, everyone!  I know Fall officially kicks off tomorrow, but voting for the Quilting Gallery's weekly themed quilt contest begins today.  I thought my Sugar Shack Leaves quilt, completed in 2006, was perfect for this week's "Fall's Glory" theme so I entered it in the contest. 

When I selected fabrics for this quilt, I deliberately incorporated some deeper reds and jewel tones to get away from the brown-on-brown effect of so many autumn themed quilts.  I chose a variety of light blue background fabrics to create the effect of fall leaves swirling around against a blue sky, and I'm really happy with the contrast and energy that resulted.  This is also the first and only piece that I've quilted by hand.


Hand Quilting Detail

Machine Embroidered Quilt Label

Please click here to pop over to the Quilting Gallery blog where you can see all of the beautiful entries and cast votes for your favorites.  Voting is open now through the weekend, with one vote allowed per IP address, and the winners will be announced Monday morning.  Of course I'd appreciate it if you felt inclined to vote for me.  ;-)  Thank you!