I was surprised at the method of hand quilting. I thought that you put the needle down into the quilt and then up again but that is not the way at all. You insert the needle and do a rocking stitch to pick up more stitches on your needle and use the thimble to push the needle through the fabric. I hope that makes sense. It is not an easy process. In fact it was very strange to me and hard to get my fingers working the right way. Some of the participants caught on right away and I did take pictures.
Jeannette stressed that the main thing is that the stitches are consistent and that was very hard to do. Some were large and some small. Also it was hard to make the needle go thru so that there was a stitch on the other side of the work.
One of Jeannette's quilts that was hand quilted.
We were a small group
Straight lines
A nice grid
Triangles
Here is my attempt at hand quilting. This is just some of what I did in the 4 hours but I thought I would show my straight lines. My stitches aren't very uniform but my lines are straight.
This is the back of my quilt and as you can see there are stitches missing on the backing. It was not easy doing the hand quilting but it was fun and I learned a lot.
Practice makes perfect as Jeannette said.
This is the frame that Jeannette uses for her hand quilting.
Peggy
2 comments:
Consistency and evenness comes with practice. I have been a hand quilter for years and still love doing it.
Actually, when I learned about quilting I pieced by hand and quilted by hand. It took quite a while for me to start using a machine for piecing. But, when it comes to curved pieces I still prefer to do it by hand.
When I taught I always stressed that the stitch length should be the same as the space between the stitches. . .that seemed to help my students relax and think beyond the "I have got to have tiny stitches" rut.
Good luck with your future hand quilting.
Years ago I tried to learn to quilt in a volunteer quilting group at St Mary's Church. The woman who is teaching the class keep getting mad at me because my stitches weren't small enough and consistent enough, nor did every single one go through all three layers. She was so cranky about the whole thing that I left after the first meeting. Now on the rare occasions when I do hand quilting, I do it my way and to heck with what anybody else thinks.
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