Monday, January 18, 2016

Finishing a UFO, and what I have learned about machine quilting

I had this UFO (Un Finished Object) on my shelf for awhile. It came from American Patchwork & Quilting, From June of 2009! I think I actually started on it that summer. It's called Summertime Blues, pattern by Jill Finley of Jilllily Studio you can see her page here: Jillily studio.

  I didn't like the quilting the stitches were too erratic some tiny and some huge..... I was having a lot of trouble with the stitch regulator which was going bad. I had become quite attached to it.  Since then I have a Norton Fun Quilter 17. and mostly quilt w/o the stitch regulator.
A couple yrs ago my mom helped me by taking out a lot of the stitches... it was very tedious.  I have learned a lot about quilting since I started this UFO, and now finished it. As I finished the binding I thought about what I had learned.

#1 don't keep doing something if it isn't right, stop and figure out what... otherwise you will have to rip out all those stitches. Which we did a lot of but I didn't remove all of them.

#2 I do pretty darn good w/o the stitch regulator. I requilted some parts of it, and also the background was free motion.

#3 pay attention to your tails. When I started a stopped on this originally I just did a few stitches in the same place. I didn't pull my thread up after doing a couple of back stitches. I had been taught to 'take some stitches in place' and cut the thread.... It leads to knots on the back of the quilt though.

#4 Pull your tails up and tuck them in as you go. I use this method you can view it here : burying threads, by K Grace Howe this is not the one I originally viewed, but it's the same method. There were a lot of tails on this UFO that I had to bury, and today I found another one.


#5 washing makes a lot of "errors" disappear. I don't wash my fabrics before quilting. One of the advantages for this quilt was that some of the upper green thread was showing through. most of that disappeared with washing.
 I still haven't labeled my quilt. And I need to do that.