Would this work? Making a cheap quilt

[VixStarr]

I don't know if this would work so please feel free to say that I am a bit crazy.

Backstory :

I made my first patchwork top ( i was also a virgin sower) ages ago and finally managed to pin it to its wadding/back material but i am too scared to quilt it in fear of making a mistake because i think its pretty good and don't want to mess it up so have just left it unfinished. There's no way that I can machine quilt it - my lidl machine is not that up for it and my hand stitching is rubbish.

I saw this lovely cream and white duvet cover in a charity shop thinking that I could use a fleece blanket as wadding, cut the duvet cover to size and practice handstitching and maybe with how it looks use it. Would it work and would i get something that will look alright ( 0bviously if my sticthing makes the grade). I don't weather i should bother and just save myself the hassle and send it off to get it quilted?

A fleece blanket will be too thick and will buckle and cause you no end of hell.

I'd look on YouTube for quilting tutorials. If you getnanwadding in a lightweight material you could do it by hand starting in the middle and working your way outwards

See I think it would work as long as the fleece is that thin type if fleece. I think it would work because the fleece will hold in place better than polyester wadding, which if you are hand sewing and therefore taking your time, you will need.

I have done the same with fleece and an old duvet cover when making a quilt for ds2. It was single duvet sized, but I didn't hand sew it, I used my machine and it still took a long time.

How much will it cost to send off to get quilted, and are you sure your sewing machine wouldn't be able to cope?

Hand quilting is only done with running stitch isn't it - it's not at all hard. You might think your hand stitching isn't up to much but you will soon be good after all that quilting!

Yes, running stitch or if you feel really lazy you can just get a silk yarn and put in random knots.

Yes, quilting is just a running stitch. You just need a bit of practice at getting into a rhythm and making sure that you use the right technique - you need to sort of stab and rock and YouTube would give you some demos if you need it. A hoop might help, to grip the quilt but not too tightly.

TBH you don't need to practice on a whole other quilt. You could put together something cushion sized from your scraps and practice on that. I agree that the fleece would work as a wadding though, so long as it wasn't too thick. You also need to be careful as the duvet cover is unlikely to be a similar fabric to patchwork fabric, depending on what you used to make your top. It could be a lot more tightly woven and harder to quilt as a result which is another reason why I would use up the scraps from making the original quilt top.

Personally I would persevere with the hand quilting though. Depending on size it will cost in excess of £100 to send away for quilting.

If you ate worried about how it will look you can see in the seem area of the squares rather than over the top of the squares if you see what I mean

Thanks for all your advice.

I have tried using my machine to quilt but it just couldn't do the three layers - and well for £25 I wasn't really expecting it too!

I think that I will do both - practice running stitch using the scrappy bits of fabric and thus making a matching cushion and then doing the duvet cover using an ikea fleece because i really like the fabric and i live in a freezing house. It's just I really dislike practising for the sake of it - I need to have a usable end product after all that effort!

I definitely will follow the seams on my quilt top - for some reason I didn't think of doing! Hmmm seems i have tied myself project wise until at least this Christmas.