Wednesday, July 9, 2014

A Great Start

The way that a seam is pressed makes a huge difference when you are quilting inside of the lines (not doing an allover design). I looked at this yesterday in the above photo and realized that the direction that the seams were going was just helter skelter. I have envisioned a quilting plan and the seams were going to be an issue. For my last quilt in this series it was not and issue because of the design choice I made. Well it was time to have a session with Jack The Ripper and pick out just the places where the seams needed to be flipped and resew them. It actually did not take as long as I feared. You can see the before in the top and the after in the bottom photo. When I originally pieced this I had no real quilting plan so I did not even give it any thought.
 So fast forward to the quilt on the frame. I have done something new which is to baste the entire top before quilting. That way it will not shift as I go back and forth with different thread colors. This is just a sneak peek at this quilt. It is the same piecing method as the orange and blue Over The Limit II but I am doing something very different with the quilting on this one. So far I am liking what is happening on the surface and think I have a great start!

2 comments:

Shelley: the Dread Pirate Rodgers said...

Interesting that you don't stitch the quilt sides as you progress ... that was the way I was taught (which doesn't mean it's the CORRECT way, it's just the way I was taught).

By stitching down the sides as you quilt, by the time you get to the end and stitch across the bottom and THAT allows you to release the top (flimsy) roller. This gives you exactly ONE layer, attached to the take-up bar and the backing rail .. which allows you to roll the partially quilted top back and forth to get to areas that you intentionally left unquilted.

If I intend on doing SITD, followed by filler stitches, I will do all the SITD and the sides of the quilt, all the way to the bottom. Once I am at one layer, I can then re-roll the quilt to return to the areas that need the filler stitching, knowing that the SITD has stabilized the quilt.

It's just one way of attacking the quilting part. :-)

Sewing Up A Storm said...

Shelley in response to your comment: Stitching in the ditch to the bottom of the quilt would require lots of thread color change. What I did instead was to baste the entire quilt as well as thoroughly tacking down all four sides. This stabilized the quilt for more dense quilting to come. Then I rolled back to the top and did a stitch in the ditch around a shape, at this point I can fill in my design in that area. There are many ways to stabilize a quilt on rollers. Once it is basted it is not going to move around. I saw this technique in a longarm site and am giving it a try it is not the conventional way.