Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Handstitching

To hand-quilt or to machine quilt, that is the question...



I find that this is an interesting question to ask quilters.  There are some who enjoy the hand-quilting and believe this to be the best way, while others love the speed and consistency or "look" of the machine quilting.  Some quilters are more passionate than others with their opinions.

For me, I enjoy the hand-quilting, but can only get myself to do it every four quilts or so.  And sometimes I only do it when I have a tight deadline.  Wait, isn't hand-quilting supposed to take longer?  Sometimes yes, but my trusted quilter tends to have a 3-4 turn around and sometimes a girl does not have that scheduled into her timeline. 



This weekend I started hand-quilting an adorable project for my niece.  She is turning eight and in my faith, it's a big milestone.  As a part of this milestone, my sister asked for a quilt...with a short timeline.  The result is a simpler quilt that I'm excited to share, but I'm waiting on finishing the hand-quilting first!



The quilt features some of the Wee Wander fabric along with prints from my stash.  To make the quilt more snuggly, I used a "flamingo" colored minky for the backing.  The coral color lent itself well to some pearl cotton and I'm now off to the races.

By the way, it's a little tougher to hand quilt through minky...just an fyi.

Crossing my fingers I can get this hand-quilted this weekend!

6 comments:

  1. It's looking great so far!! I'm excited to see the finished product :)

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  2. It is MUCH harder to quilt through! Hang in there! I have seen it, and its darling!

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  3. I love the look of the handquilting, but so far have only done it on two baby quilts because of the time factor. however, I'm working on a Gypsy Wife quilt and will definitely handquilt that one. I also enjoy doing my own FMQ, so my options are wide open. really, it depends on the quilt. some need one or the other because of the look or feel of the quilt. I think it's wonderful that you take time to do this periodically. so nice of you to make one for your niece (baptism? =D)! I can barely get on done for each new baby. good luck! it's adorable so far from what we can see.

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  4. I much prefer the way hand quilting looks, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I'm so much faster on machine. Maybe if I didn't have 10 projects running all the time, I could spend more time on details!

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  5. You are a brave woman! Good luck getting the quilt finished...I can't wait to see how it looks. I was telling a friend a few days ago that I've never seen Wee Wander actually made into anything, just the fabric, so it will be an exciting reveal!!!

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  6. Looking forward to seeing your hand quilting finished, and on a timeline! Wow. I have only quilted smaller projects by hand and one day will try ato do a bigger quilt. I love handwork so it seems natural. I think both methods are equally impressive and take an amount of skill.

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