What is Quilting?
Quilting or stitching your quilt ensures that the 3 layers of your quilt sandwich are held together, making the quilt last longer.
Quilting can be done by hand or by using a sewing machine, using various stitch types and techniques creating texture to your quilt with often stunning results.
What you need to quilt
Quilt sandwich (the three layers of your completed quilt - quilt top, batting and backing fabric)
Machine quilting:
- Marking supplies - erasable pen, chalk pencil and a ruler to mark straight lines.
- Sewing machine - read the machine's manual on settings for quilting
- Quilting thread - 100% cotton thread is great for machine quilting.
- Quilting needle for your sewing machine - machine quilting needles or sharps will pierce through all layers of your quilt. use a 75/11 for thinner batting and increase to 80/12 or 90/14 for thicker batting.
- Optional - a walking foot for your sewing machine (it helps to feed the layers of fabric evenly through the machine).
- Optional - a darning foot for your sewing machine used for a technique called free motion quilting
- Optional - Quilting stencils and quilting rulers - to create many different stitching patterns.
Hand quilting:
- Quilting needles - betweens or a quilting needle is short with a small eye. A size 8 is great for beginners.
- Quilting thread - hand quilting thread that is 100% natural cotton thread. This is great as it's strong and will easily pass through layers of fabric and batting.
- Frame or hoop
- Thimble - to protect your fingers
When quilting, start simple. Quilting can be done by hand using simple hand stitches or knots or with a sewing machine. A small square patchwork quilt is one of the easiest quilts for a beginner to make. Charm packs are great for this as they are pre cut.
How to hand quilt:
Hand quilting is great for beginners and is very portable - it can be a great on the go project. Use a simple running stitch through all three layers of the quilt to secure them.
When quilting by hand you can use an embroidery hoop or a quilting frame to hold your fabric taught or you can simply stitch your quilt on your lap, whichever you find easier.
Start stitching at the centre of your quilt and work outwards.
Thread a needle with approx 18 inches of thread and tie a knot at the end. Start a line of running stitches ensuring the needle goes through all layers. To finish, make a knot and run the needle through the batting, ensuring the knot is beneath the top fabric.
Continue stitching until your quilting design is complete.
How to machine quilt:
Machine quilting is stitching using straight or decorative stitches. As a beginner, it's probably easiest to start with straight line quilting. Two techniques are:-
Stitch in the ditch quilting:
Stitch along the seam lines of your patchwork blocks or pieces that make up the blocks.
Grid or crosshatch quilting:
Stitch in parallel lines either in a grid pattern or in a diagonal crosshatch pattern. This is an easy way of quilting which also adds visual interest to plain fabrics.
Machine quilting - free motion quilting
Once you're feeling a bit more confident why not give free motion quilting a go, it's a bit like drawing with a needle, allowing you to be really creative with your stitching.
You will need: a free motion quilting foot ( also known as a darning foot) for your sewing machine, quilting gloves, fresh quilting needle and you will need to move your stitch length to zero and drop your feed dogs on your machine
Before you start to quilt, you may find it useful to mark your quilting design onto your quilt top with either marking pens / pencils or you can use a variety of quilting stencils that are readily available through quilting stockists. Use a marker to draw along the cut out lines of your stencil, marking the pattern that you will stitch.
Note : test your marking tool - do the marks come out easily after stitching?
Practice, practice, practice - you will want to practice because it can be a little difficult to adjusting to this new technique. As the feed dogs are not working, your hands are defining the stitch length so if you go too fast your stitches will be too large and if you go too slow they're going to be really small. Practice to get your stitches the same length and to make them look more professional.
Ensure you have a full bobbin, have your gloves on get yourself some little quilt sandwiches to practice with and have a go. Manoeuvre your quilt around to stitch your quilting patterns / design.
There are many good free motion quilting tutorials on you tube which you can view, that are ideal for beginners.
