I made this little quilt in 1986. It is machine pieced and hand quilted, and has had a lot of use and love, mostly by my son Loren. He was 6 in 1986, and it is the perfect size to snuggle under to watch television. Notice the colors? When I made this quilt, I was also attending the University of Michigan.
Go Blue!
I like to pull out my quilts and look at them periodically. It’s also good to get them out, shake them and refold in a different way so that creases don’t set in (which you can see in this picture).
As I was looking at the quilt, I realized how thin the batting was. I used to use Mountain Mist exclusively. It was a thinner polyester batting, good for hand quilting, and gave me very tiny stitches. Of course, in 1986 I was doing a LOT of hand quilting! The more practice you have with hand quilting, the smaller you can get your stitches to be. Mine were very tiny!
I’m finding as I get older, I’m using different batts than I used to. I like an 80/20 batt; I love cotton in my quilts. They feel warmer than straight polyester, and I love the pucker that comes from washing quilts with cotton batting.
I also notice that as you get older, age has a way of increasing your quilt stitch length. I don’t know if it’s my eyesight or a little arthritis or what, but I don’t like it. Not one little bit!
If you are a machine quilter, this probably doesn’t mean a hill of beans to you. But for a hand quilter, stitch length is important. Size DOES matter!!!
Wish I could do the hand quilting that beautiful! I guess I will, someday, with a looooot of practice… I hope ;o)
Wish you a Happy Easter :o)
Laila
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you do fine stitch work Caron but I need to disagree with you on stitch size. I don't think the stitch size needs to be tiny to be good quilting – I think consistency of size is what counts. I do not worry about stitch size but then that is me. I normally take about 7 or 8 stitches to the inch and I do not measure often just once in awhile when I am curious about what I am doing – if I really, really think about it I can do 10 or 11 stitches but then I am not relaxing and that is more important to me – I do not enter shows though either because I do not want to stress out about perfection.
Karen
http://karensquilting.com/blog/
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