Sunday, November 9, 2008

Secrets of Machine Quilting


A friend pointed out that I had been "away" from my blog for a while. This is a good reminder that I not only need to blog, but I also need to get back to sewing. I got back into my groove sewing by pulling up a quilt that I have basted and ready to go. I love to BSR (yep, it can be a verb) with silk thread. I am working on a two color quilt. I am using the white area for all of the quilting with white silk thread and not hitting the yellow pieced triangles. I love the stitches with silk and the control I can get to create nice swoops.

The two things that make my machine quilting better ARE a stitch regulator and 100 weight silk thread. I promise. My quilting hasn't always been this much fun. I came to quilting as a hand-quilter but never finished many quilts. I wanted to machine quilt but knew little about it in 1999. I had done some stitch in the ditch with a walking foot but never free-motion quilting. The first time I free-motion quilted, I went right to a quilt. It was a small quilt, and I had never quilted by machine before. I basted the quilt with safety pins (still my favorite method for basting), dropped the feed dogs and went stitching. When I got done, it wasn't great but it wasn't awful. I think the reason I did well with it was that I was willing to wreck a quilt. Yes, you read that right. Committing to just dashing in on a quilt will be the best thing you can do to advance your quilting skills.

1. GO WRECK A QUILT....2. BE SURE TO USE SILK THREAD....3. USE A BERNINA STITCH REGULATOR. Those ARE the secrets!

jill

2 comments:

KelliBag said...

I couldn't agree with you more Jill, especially on using silk thread - it is fantastic! And not being afraid to ruin a quilt. Not that I wanted to ruin a quilt, but my very first one turned out better than I would have imagined, just because I wasn't afraid to try.

Just go for it,
Kelli

Anonymous said...

I completely agree, the BSR is great and just giving yourself permission to create is the first step. Put in a new needle and get started!

I also really like the Machingers quilting gloves!