machine quilting – tierneycreates

This is a sort of follow up to my post: ScrapHappy October 2024: Recycled Hope .

Finally I am machine quilting the denim quilt I made last year which is currently called “What Direction Do I Go?”.

Here is up on the design wall before quilting:

Here it is in progress while I am quilting with the first color of thread (I used two colors):

Here it is partially finished (I am over halfway done with adding a second color of thread):

I am quilting it in a style I call “Organic Matchstick” quilting. Yes I totally made that phrase it. Matchstick quilting looks like this:

Image credit – Epida Studio – epidastudio.com/how-to-quilt-it-matchstick-quilting/

My quilting is a bit more “organic” with an occasional line touching or a little wiggle (why yes I of course planned that – ha!)

Here is the back of the quilt, I love the feel/texture of the quilting:

I cannot wait to finish it. I plan to do a “facing” instead of binding the quilt. Okay well back to work for me!

Postscript: Halloween Cuteness

Oh and here is some Halloween cuteness (yesterday was Halloween). We stopped over a friend’s house last night and they had two of their dogs in Hawaiian shirts dressed up as “Magnum. P.I.“ (if you remember that that 1980s show starring Tom Selleck):

Here are Pepi and Lewis doing their best Magnum, P.I. impersonations. Dolly the Aussie Shepherd was having no part in it!

Bet you can’t tell the dogs apart from Tom Selleck, right? Ha!

We had quite the giggle over the dogs’ costumes 🙂

Defining “Basted”

Basted? As in “basting”? If you are not into sewing, you might think I am referring the culinary process of basting (moistening food with a liquid to keep it soft, such as when making a roast). I promise you, as much as I love quilts and quilting, I have not started eating them (smile).

I am referring instead to the process of sewing down a quilt sandwich (again Tierney, what is up with the food references?) – the quilt top, the batting, and the quilt back – using large/long stitches to temporarily anchor it together. A quilt is basted to hold everything together while you add the final smaller machine (or hand) stitching.

The Dilemma

In several older posts, like Progress and Fear, I discuss dealing with a large backlog of quilts, received from the long-arm machine quilter, that I needed sew binding on and finish. I have many of my quilts (especially the large ones) professionally quilted by a wonderful long-arm machine quilter. This is not free to have done. Normally I can handle the reasonable fee my long-arm quilter charges.

However, “Terry the Quilting Husband” was very prolific in quilt making this past spring and summer. As a result I had a lot of new quilting turnover and expenses all at once.

My long-arm quilter, who is also a dear friend, was very sensitive to this and offered on one of my next quilts, that she would baste it on the long-arm machine for me and charge me for that service and the batting, significantly less than a full professional long-arm machine quilting. Then I could quilt it myself with my regular sewing machine without the struggle of trying to baste it on my own in a domestic machine.

A couple weeks ago I got the quilt back from the long-arm quilter, all nicely basted. In the photo below you can see the large/long basting stitches.

The Temptation

Yes. You guessed it. I am tempted to say: “This looks good, this will work, I can just put the binding on and call it good”! I have been struggling with temptation. The temptation not to quilt it myself and just have a basting as the final quilting (the quilters reading this part of the post are either gasping in horror or nodding their heads in understanding).

For the time being, I am just letting it sit in the corner and I am sure I will eventually quilt it myself.

Eventually.