I’ve inherited a love for piecing quilts tops from my mom. To us, it’s hard to beat that feeling when you put that final stitch into a quilt top. At that moment you finally get to see the fruits of your labor after cutting your fabric into lots of tiny little pieces and then sewing them all back together again in a different order.
The more quilt tops we finished, however, the more we started to run into a problem: we had lots of quilt tops, but not a lot of completed quilts. So we’ve both committed to working more on actually quilting more of our quilts so that we can truly finish and begin using them. For many people, us included, the quilting is one of the most intimidating parts of this craft. While we’ve decided it’s a skill we want to improve, there are actually lots of different ways that we can finish our quilts.
Pay Someone Else To Do It
Famous quilter, designer, and author Eleanor Burns has a saying: “I quilt with my credit card.” She’s known as a truly prolific quilt top piecer, but decided a long time ago that she wasn’t interested in learning how to do the quilting. While her talent with a needle and thread makes it clear that she probably could learn how to do the quilting, she’s realized that her love is with piecing quilt tops and she’d rather spend her time doing that.
So once she’s finished a quilt top, she simply sends it out to the longarmer for quilting. The end result is a finished quilt that’s ready to use, and she didn’t have to spend time doing something she didn’t enjoy to get there.
Sending your quilts out to be quilted by a longarmer is a great solution if you don’t have time to quilt or simply aren’t interested. It can also be a great way to help you dig out of flimsy quilt top overwhelm. Have a closet full of quilt tops? Send one a month to the longarmer and your UFO pile will drop in no time!
Use Your Domestic Sewing Machine
Most quilters and sewists have a domestic machine for piecing their quilt tops. But these machines are also great for quilting! You can purchase a walking foot which is a great way to quilt straight lines, including stitch-in-the-ditch, outlining, and echo quilting. You can also lower the feed dots for free motion quilting.
One challenge with a domestic sewing machine is the small throat space. Throat space, also called harp space, is the distance between your needle and the controls on the right hand side of the machine. Domestic sewing machines usually have a throat space of less than nine inches, with some machines having as few as seven inches! While this may not matter for smaller projects, a small throat space will make it more of a challenge to quilt queen and king sized quilts.
Mom and I both started to learn to machine quilt with our Bernina domestic sewing machines. We already had the machines so there was no new piece of equipment we had to buy. We have watched a lot of different tutorials from experienced domestic machine quilters: two of our favorites are Leah Day and Christa Watson.
Buy a Longarm or a Midarm
If you’d like to do the quilting yourself but don’t want to use your domestic machine, think about purchasing a longarm or midarm. This is NOT an insignificant purchase and you’ll need to have both the space and the finances to buy something like this. There’s also a bit of a learning curve as you get used to using the machine. You’ll need lots of practice to truly get comfortable quilting on a longarm or midarm, but once you get the hang of it you’ll finish quilts faster than you expect.
Mom and I have both gone down this path with our midarm Bernina Q20s. We’ve found this to be a perfect solution for projects big and small. We both went with a midarm as we didn’t have spaces that were large enough to hold a longarm, and the price was less as well. We’re Bernina girls (although Mom does have a cute Featherweight for travel), and we’ve been very happy with our machines.
Hand Quilting
You can’t get more traditional than making a hand-quilted quilt. Hand quilting creates beautiful quilts with intricate designs and as many thread color changes as you’d like. It’s also a meditative practice as you fall into the rhythm of the stitching. You can do hand quilting in a quilt frame that holds the whole quilt, a smaller quilting stand, or even a simple quilt frame/hoop that you rest on your lap.
One downside to hand quilting is the time it takes to complete a project, especially if your quilt is large. Since you’re usually working in a frame or hoop of some sort it’s not as portable as hand sewing is, which means you’re likely not taking it with you to sew on during any quiet moments of the day. Hand quilting will go much faster if you have the quilt in a frame and have multiple quilters working on it at once in the traditional quilting bee style.
Hand Tying
If you don’t want to actually add any quilting but still need to finish your quilt, hand tying might be the perfect solution. Hand tying uses a large needle (such as tapestry needle) to pull yarn or another heavy thread through all three layers of the quilt (backing, batting, and top), tying a knot on top to hold them all together. The knots hold everything in place even as the quilt is used, loved, and washed.
Hand tying is a quick and easy way to finish a quilt. It’s much less time consuming than traditional quilting and is very easy to do. It’s a popular technique for young quilters who are just getting started with quilting and want to get their first projects finished on their own. You can also add in buttons or charms to your ties, adding a third dimension and fun embellishments to your quilt.
Give it a try!
Which ones of these quilting techniques have you tried? Which one do you want to try next? If you’ve always tied your quilts, think about choosing a small project and giving another quilting technique a try.
If you’ve decided you don’t want to do any types of quilting, think about following in Eleanor Burns’ footsteps and sending your quilts out to be quilted. Remember, finished is better than perfect!
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