Hand Quilter's Tips

-

I've finished the appliquéd top of my first 2022 project. Now I've moved on to the hand quilting stage.  

For earlier hand quilted projects, I used a needle punched cotton batting which I felt was easy to work with since it is fairly thin. "Needle punched" means that the cotton has been treated with a stabilizer called "scrim" and then it is poked with needles. This makes it stable and dense, not layered or fluffy, and the batting is more durable. However, I found that sometimes little wisps of white appeared on the surface top where the needle pierced the fabric. This is called "bearding." 

I wasn't sure why it was happening until a guest speaker from Hobbs Batting gave a talk to our guild. It turns out that, unless your needle is going through the batting in the same direction as the needle punch did in manufacturing, you are liable to catch little balls of the scrimmed batting when pulling the thread to the surface. 

It was suggested that a second layer of another kind of batting be used to prevent this. I was skeptical, but decided to try it on this quilt. And I'm happy to report it works beautifully. First came the backing fabric, second was a layer of cotton batting, then a layer of unneedled wool batting, followed by my quilt top. The extra layer makes it a bit more cumbersome, but there are no signs of bearding, . . . yeah!!!

I've reached one of the edges now and that can be a problem when using a hoop. As you can see, it's not very stable; the fabric and batting can shift, or the edge can sag and stretch.

Extend the quilt to fit the hoop by basting an extra strip of fabric to the edge through all the layers. Then the quilt can be pulled taught in the hoop. I save and repurpose old bed linens for lots of things, (including knit blocking and ironing fragile fabrics) so, rather than damage good cotton, I grabbed some sheet scraps that work great and can be used over and over:




 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Ooops, I did it again

-
Image
You know when you make a mistake and you end up thinking " Man, I really should have known better!"? I recently experienced that moment when I took my latest finish out of the wash, hung it to dry, and later found that the backing I used had bled through to the front of the quilt. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if it had covered the entire quilt, but in this case I have a strip of a stronger color on one side of the back: Heartbreaking to think that after all that time and effort, the piece was ruined just because I forgot to turn to the cold/cold setting for the delicate cycle on the washing machine. But then it occurred to me to "put it out there." I posted the problem on Instagram and got back several suggestions. The most popular solution was Dawn dish soap. And I'm happy to report I've met with success!!! It did require some persistence though. First, I tried applying Dawn to the affected areas and then putting it through the wash with a bit of ...
Read more

A Follow Up

-
Image
Shifting Contour When last you heard of this quilt it had been saved from the scourge of fabric bleeding. But I never posted the whole quilt. So here it is.  I have called it Shifting Contour because, in my mind, the patterned fabric plays the role of the background on the left side of the piece. On the right side, the patterned fabric moves to the foreground and becomes a solid shape against the cream background. It is an experiment with the concept of negative space. This year our local guild has taken the lead from our parent organization, the Modern Quilt Guild, and focused on a specific topic each quarter. They covered categories which can be found in the annual QuiltCon quilt show: modern traditionalism, applique, negative space, and minimalism.  I found defining these terms has been really helpful, as sometimes it's difficult to identify why a certain quilt is in a category, in which category a quilt "belongs" when entering it, and even how to deliberately incorpo...
Read more

Q=A=Q 2025 Opening

-
Image
  The first weekend in November was the opening of the annual Quilts=Art=Quilts show at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York.  Q=A=Q Opening Night The show includes seventy quilts created by fifty three artists from around the world, including  Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Kuwait, Switzerland, and the US. This is the second year that I've been honored to be juried into Q=A=Q.  It requires a bit of effort to get to upstate New York on opening night; there are no direct flights from our location. So I'm doubly grateful for the support of family who joined me to take in the experience.  This is very different from a large quilt convention. While you can get up close to the work at any kind of quilt show, the more intimate setting of a gallery brings a unique perspective. The environment elevates a quilt to the status of art. I love that there are so many ways to present my work. I know this is a relatively new phenomenon and it reflects c...
Read more