Sunday, November 4, 2012

Quilting Again

I spent Saturday morning doing my least favorite quilt related task.  I sandwiched and basted a quilt for hand quilting.  That involves moving furniture and sitting on the floor for ages, making giant basting stitches to hold everything together.

This is the project for which I used the machine trapunto technique of basting the extra layer of batting in place using FMQ with a wash-away thread on top.  I posted about this technique on Celebrate Hand Quilting a couple weeks ago.

Unfortunately, I had used a new marking pencil that mostly brushed off during the FMQ process.

That tends to be a problem because I am not very good / accurate with FMQ so my basted flowers are all wonky.  I spent the day trying to reshape flowers as I stitched.


All things considered, it's turning out pretty well. And I'm starting to actually enjoy the fact that my floral motif is a little organic and not as symmetrical as it was planned.

This final photo really illustrates bad basting turning into nice quilting.


7 comments:

Carolyn said...

It's stunning! Can't wait to see it finished...

Raewyn said...

It is beautiful! I, too, look forward to seeing more.

Lynette said...

Very pretty. This is going to be stunning when it's finished. I'm embarking this evening on my very first hand quilting. We'll see how it goes! lol It's a mini hawaiian quilt, so it shouldn't be too difficult or take too terribly long. I'm hoping I like it so I can do a full quilt some day. There's just something special about a hand-quilted quilt, eh?

Unknown said...

Lovely!!!!

Unknown said...

Love your hand quilting! I admittedly am horrible with hand stitching so I really envy your work :D. About basting there is a tutorial on youtube by Sharon Schamber on how to baste by hand without having to be on the floor and it works like a charm, here's the link to part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhwNylePFAA

I thought you might find this as handy as I have :)

Lynne said...

Looks good to me!

I don't mind basting but agree that doing it on the floor is a pain - in more ways than one!

Angie in SoCal said...

I understand your pain of doing that on the floor. There's got to be a better way, so I'm going to watch that video another commentator posted. It's going to be beautiful - it already is from what I can see.