quilting cred

Ok, now I finally feel like a real quilter.

 I broke a needle! I know it seems like an odd thing to be excited about, and I was pretty surprised and a little annoyed when it happened (it was my favourite needle after all) but I do feel that in a way it gives me quilting street cred. Feel free to laugh at that last sentence if you want. 

I'm working on the quilting part of The Big One. And frankly, the actual quilting part of quilt making is my least favourite part of the process. For those of you who don't quilt, 'quilting' refers to sewing through the three layers of the quilt; the top, batting and back. Whereas 'piecing' or 'patchwork' is the process of sewing together all the bits that make the top itself. I much prefer piecing to quilting. But I think this may be because I've always quilted useing my sewing machine, which is a kind of intense, arduous process involving manuevering a giant, heavy three layered bedcover through a machine. Its hard on the back and the arms, and is not that easy to do, albeit much faster than hand quilting. 

But I've decided to do a bit of hand quilting in this quilt. Most of it is machine quilted with long straight lines of machine stitches and Hubs, bless his heart and his back, helps me by holding most of the weight of the quilt while I get it through the machine. But I thought that it would look nice with a bit of quilting in the center of the blocks, in a little rectangular shape that followed the piecing, and I knew for sure that my shoulders could not handle all those ninety degree turns under the machine. So I gave hand quilting a shot. 

And I love it! I love the way it looks. I like the feel of doing it. It is waaaaay easier on the back. Glacially slow of course when compared with machine quilting, but one doesn't exactly get into quilting because one likes a speedy finished product, if you know what I mean. Anyhow, when I was reading up on how to do this, one book said "don't worry, you'll break a lot of needles along the way." and I thought "oh come on, how could you break a needle?" But there it is. I broke a needle as a strained it trying to pick up as many stitches as I could at once, going through three layers of fabric, and along the seam allowance edge, so really there is probably more like four layers there. Anyhow, it felt like a milestone. 

And now I've got to go buy some more needles.  

Comments

[steph]

Mmm, it looks gorgeous, Dre. I love the closeup of the material.

And, er, congrats on breaking that needle!