How do I quilt my quilt? Have you ever said this? Want to find out more about my latest quilting giveaway? Make sure to read along!
You can hand quilt it, you can machine quilt it, you can have someone else machine quilt it on a long arm, these are your options.
In this post I want to touch on the topic of having your quilt Long Arm quilted.
There are three types on Long arm Quilting. Custom, Pantograph and Computerized. I am going to give you quick examples…
Custom is your feathers and wreaths and most of the time fancy quilting, but not always…it can be simple as well. The Quilter is guiding the machine and is in control of it. It is their work.
Pantograph quilting is hand guided, meaning the quilter is following a pattern but they are still guiding the machine.
Computerized quilting the computer is running the design, most of the time edge to edge or in a space, such as a design in an alternate block.
When you bring your quilt to the Long Arm Quilter you need to make some decisions on how you want it quilted. Some quilters know exactly what they want. Most, however, do not…they struggle with it…if this is you…Ask your quilter what they think…I sometimes ask what does the quilt say to you? There are really no rules and this is what quilting is all about, creativity and freedom to do what you want on your quilt. Remember this…and you will be much more relaxed about the whole thing.
This post could be pages and pages long about Long Arm Quilting, but since I have these 5 Redwork Gathering quilts. I want to talk about each one…how it was quilted, what color threads we used…. Why we chose what we did in a quilting design…just a short explanation. I know there are other choices such as battings but that’s a whole other post…but if you need to know we use an 80/20 batting in my quilts…it’s my favorite…I love the look of them before and after they have been washed so it’s a win either way…and you won’t go broke buying this batting.
So when you have your quilt quilted or you quilt your own if you need some ideas hopefully this will help and by the way…I knew I was going to post something about the quilts being quilted so I did some experimenting on them…and to be fair…the comments and statements I make are just my opinions…nothing more than that…remember…there really are no rules in quilting, in the end it is your quilt…do what you wish. If you need help ask for it…quilters will help quilters make good decisions.
Long Long Way from Home…
When you look at this quilt at first sight, what do you see? Is it the design? Is it the colors, Is it the quilting? The answer to the last question is NO…I do not think that is what you see when you first view this quilt. I think this is a good thing in a quilt such as this, you do not need the quilting to be the star…you want the design and the color to be more prominent. With that in mind, we chose to stitch an allover design…we scaled it a little smaller so it complimented the sizes of the pieces in the quilt. Now the next choice is the million dollar question, what color thread do we quilt it with? This choice sometimes makes or breaks a quilt for me. I very much dislike seeing bold white thread on dark fabrics!!!! But what do you do when you have a two color quilt like this one? Do you quilt light?, dark? Pull your hair right out! ugh, right? Redwork Gatherings is really complimentary to either choice…because the lights have red in them and the reds have light in them. On this quilt I chose the red thread. I wanted to see how much it over took the light fabrics. When you put your nose right up to it…you definitely see that red thread…but it is in no way bothersome. I think this quilt turned out Awesome! The scale of the honeycomb and the red thread are a hit!
Take it Easy…again…what do you see when you first look? The design, the colors, and then you see the quilting design. On this quilt we choose to use the light thread…
But…the thread we used was a shade darker then the cream…so it’s invisible on the cream and you can see it on the red…but…it doesn’t scream out on the red…like it would have done if we chose a light thread that was a smidge lighter than our cream or matched exactly to our cream…this quilt has also been washed which helps the stitches sink deeper into the quilt and not lay on top as a freshly quilted quilt might look as it does here…
The pattern that was chosen for Take It Easy was a traditional, timeless pattern, nothing too complicated or busy…again, nothing to distract from what I loved most about this quilt. The sheer simple-ness of it. Quilted by Jake Neubauer.
I Think I’m In Love…again another two color, what do we do here type of quilt….let first talk about the quilting design. The quilt is very angled and geometric…lots of straight lines…so, we softened those lines with the gently flowing feather type of an all over computerized design. This time we chose a light tan, much darker than the cream in the quilt above…I think to prove that a darker thread still looks great on the lights and even better on the darks. Quilted by Jake Neubauer.
This quilt with the predominately light fabric was a very clear choice in the color thread we were to use…this is a pretty spot on color match to the cream. It does show up a little brighter on the reds, but I think we can live with it…This quilt could have been custom quilted, where the quilter would switch threads…quilt red on the red fabrics and cream on the light fabrics…cut custom quilting is a little more expensive and time consuming…so I we also have to base our choice on this as well. I think this quilt with it’s time honored baptist fan quilting was another great choice for this quilt. Scale again is important…you do not want large spaces between those fans, when the blocks and pieces are smaller scale.
Computerized quilting is not all that glamous…that computer has a mind of it’s own sometimes…and advancing quilts takes skill…but in the end, the computerized quilting is very affordable and very effective way to get your quilts quilted!
55 & Life to go…with it tiny blocks and small size was a sure choice to be custom quilted. On a quilt that takes more time, is more intricate and a show stopper you want to give it what it deserves and that is some custom quilting….Now there is no need to go over the top with the quilting because in this type of quilt with the small scale and the printed fabrics the quilting hardly shows! So simple custom quilting with the thread changes, red on reds and cream thread on the cream…fits just fine!
Also pick a backing that compliments what color threads you will be using to quilt it…
I love my machine quilters…and I will be talking about more of them…but one of the things happening at Primitive Gatherings is we are going to be a Bernina dealership when we open the new shop next year, but in the meantime…Jake & Luke both have been quilting on the Bernina long arms…Jake in WI…
The Bernina long arm in action…
and here is Luke in CA….
I think we are almost ready to put it out there that we will be offering computerized quilting for customers…
I want you to be able to say….I want the same thing quilted as Long Long way from Home...or you can completely change your mind and pick from one of our designs… So look for that option soon! You don’t have to live near us either…you can ship your top, we will provide the batting and pick a backing, quilt it, and send it back…I am sure we could offer binding services as well. We will keep our turn around short with the fact that if we get a little more backlogged than we would like we can order another machine to help keep up with the demand…But more on that later…
I hope my little insight on quilting may have helped you understand a little more about quilting your quilts…and again…these are my thoughts and opinions, not the BIBLE.
I will continue to do a few more posts about custom long arming and hand quilting… I hope you stick around to see what’s next!
Thank you so much for hanging round and commenting on ALL of these posts…Winners will be picked TUESDAY for all the GIVE-AWAYS! We have so many to pick it might take the whole day! If you wish to win a Redwork Gatherings Layer Cake (that I will SHIP RIGHT AWAY, NO WAITING TIL AUGUST!) leave me a comment here about your thoughts on any of what I wrote in this post!!!
PS…it’s Nick’s Birthday today…wish Happy Birthday on Facebook! He will love it!
Leave a Reply to KogCancel reply