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Welcome to week 5 of the Giant Granny Panties quilt along. Has time been flying by for you or is it just me?? Within the next few weeks we will be done with our quilts and I don't know about you but nothing says fall like snuggling under some Giant Granny Panties...
This is my favorite week of our quilt along. Well, after the basting part it's my favorite week. ;)
However, these little things have made my basting life much easier. My mother in law and fellow quilter gave these pin covers to me and I can pin baste a quilt just as fast as I can spray baste one now. Plus my fingers don't hurt from pinning and my allergies aren't going crazy from that nasty spray!
You can find my basting tutorial here and it covers spray basting and pin basting. Except for the pin covers, I still do everything else the same.
Now on to quilting! My absolute favorite part of making a quilt. Now I know that there are a lot of quilters who don't enjoy quilting, are intimidated by it, or just don't have a lot of confidence. And I could have fit into all of those categories at one time or another.
The biggest part of quilting is practicing. That and having the patience to mess up but still keep practicing.
Start out by making some mini-quilt sandwiches out of batting scraps and fabric scraps. So much of quilting, especially free motion quilting {FMQ}, is muscle memory and getting that down is easier on manageable sized "quilts".
I start my quilting design on paper. If I can draw the design in a continuous line then {with a little practice} I will be able to quilt it as well. I love to doodle so many of my ideas come from doodling.
How you quilt your quilt can separate your quilt from the typical quilt. There are always the clear choices... you can follow the lines of the quilt.
For example, our Granny Panties {quilt} has strong lines and angles. If I were to pick the obvious, I would probably choose straight line quilting. Straight lines can be visually stunning but they can also detract from the overall design if the design already has lots of lines.
Free motion quilting with lots of busy fabric patterns might be a good choice if you want the quilting to blend in... or with this quilt the squares are big so some detailed quilting will work well to stand out in this design.
This is the back of my quilt... a.k.a granny's got back
I obsess over symmetry and asymmetry in general and I tend to go the opposite of my quilt design. If there are strong lines, I might use quilting with lots of curves which is exactly what I did with this quilt. I like using opposites to balance the overall quilt design. But that's just me... ;)
Another thing to consider is how the quilt is going to be used. If it's going to be used and washed a lot {a baby quilt} free motion quilting is a good choice. But if you want a quilt that isn't flat as a pancake and has some "fluff" to it, straight lines or even a grid pattern might be ideal.
Here is a previous post with lots of links to quilting tutorials. My favorite free motion quilting {FMQ} tutorial is still Randi's and also happens to be the one that I learned how to quilt from. :)
After you decide on how you are going to quilt your quilt, wind a bunch of bobbins, make some mini-quilt sandwiches to practice and get your tension right, and once you feel confident just start quilting! Oh... and make sure you have plenty of thread. This was not a pretty scene in my studio yesterday!
If this is your first quilt, be prepared for this step to take awhile. If you are not new to quilting and settle on some detailed design {like me} be prepared for this to take awhile too. So I guess what I'm getting at is that there is not a shortcut to good quilting so don't try to find it.
There are tons of little tips in quilting so if you have any questions please let me know! And don't forget our Flickr group either. In the next few weeks I'll be featuring your quilts so make sure to add any and all of your pictures to the group.
Next week we will be binding and finishing our quilts!