I have been making a quilt for a friend who had a baby a wee while ago. Mostly it has been going okay. I find piecing very straightforward and can do a good job of it, largely because of all my experience making clothes. Clothes have all sorts of curved seams, straight seams, issues with selvage and grain and bias, so sewing mostly straight flat seams I find pretty straightforward (literally!).
But machine quilting is proving to be a great deal more tricky. The last large quilt I did was a checkerboard pattern, with alternating string pieced and plain blocks. I quilted it with a walking foot in the ditch. All went well and although not inspired, it lies flat and there are no wrinkles on the back. The quilt I am making now has three materials in it. One is a batik of fern leaves, and I have quilted around the edge of the leaves. That went fine. The brown material is stipple quilted, and some of that is wrinkly. But mostly it is quite liveable, and I am still happy enough with it to be giving the quilt away.
I have dithered for ages working out what I would do with the blue squares. I got a fixation in my mind that I would quilt crosses in the squares. Then I couldn't find a pattern, then I couldn't get any tearaway to put the pattern onto. Then I found a pattern and bought some tearaway, and R told me that pattern had too many straight lines and wouldn't look good with the rest of the quilting which was all curves. And dangnabbit, he was right. So there I was back at the starting board.
I went to the Manawatu Quilting symposium in the weekend, and bought a book on machine quilting patterns - the average quilting pattern usually says about the quilting "Quilt as desired", and this book re-words it to "Quilt as inspired". Her patterns are great, and I used the ideas in the book to come up with a pattern with a cross and some filler patterns. It looks fantastic, is fun to quilt, suits the quilt and the five blocks of it in the middle of the quilt make me very happy. There are four blocks around the outside of the quilt in the corners that need the same pattern, and although the top of the quilt looks good, the underneath looks like screwed up paper. I will have to take out two blocks and re-do them. I must be twisting the quilt in the machine, its the only thing I can think of. I am trying to avoid the weight of the quilt, and it looks like I shouldn't.
I'm so close to the end, and I'm really very frustrated with this. I am going to join a quilting group this year, and may also do some classes at Quilt University, especially the ones on machine quilting and basting. My mother who has made a perfectly quilted quilt for H, reckons the problem is in my basting. So I'm thinking I need some better skills.
Posted by Toni at January 30, 2007 08:25 AM