beginning to quilt

[warthog]

can you start quilting with just a pair of scissors, needle, thread and material? or do you need anything else?

i've got a book that demands a long list of stuff and since i don't know if i'm going to be hooked, i'd rather not start out with a huge cost outlay.

I found mine v compatible with newborns. Most of my work was done when holed up in a flat in remotest Kurdistan in worst winter imaginable with newborn and 3 year old while dh did 12 hour days.

I do mine by hand because
1 I think it looks nicer
2 i don't know how to use a machine.

To date have done 3 kingsize and about 7 single bed/large cot blanket size. Working sporadically over 10 years. Sometimes doing nothing for 7 mths, sometimes doing 3 hours a day.

wow! what were you doing in kurdistan?

hmm i have a very interested 2.5 y who is obsessed with helping. did you manage to do it with kids around, or in evenings? unfort i have lots of hobbies that require no kids to be in a 100 mile radius.

do you have pics of your quilts? how did you manage to hand stitch the quilting part? did you use a frame to stop the layers slipping?

Dh was working there.
No, haven't pics but they are in daily use by family. Very simple pioneer style is what I like.

Yes, handstitched every part and had them on a big frame.

Kids weren't bothered. They were used to it being out all the time.

Also, don't use nylon to quilt (padding)It's vile. Must be cotton which gives it the weight of an authentic quilt too. I have used a couple of v thing blankets once or twice whaich was much cheaper.

I do mostly handstitching (unless in hurry to finish a quilt, eg for a present) in front of the telly and don't use special equipment. I really enjoyed making a super-simple quilt out of just small squares (about 5cm square) recently. I just selected a nice mix of fabrics, cut loads of squares, and sewed them randomly into strips 10 squares long, then 10 strips together to make a big square. 16 of these big squares then made a 2m-square quilt and I added a simple border. You could do 3X4 big squares for a single bed quilt.

I do very little actual quilting (sewing over it afterwards) as it's the patchwork I really enjoy. I just choose a backing and wadding (John Lewis has it as wide as I need), sew all together and quilt in basic straight lines across it.

Next I'm considering trying to copy a pattern from the Alhambra but I can see it will be tricky as it has curved shapes. I've also done triangles and Penrose Pattern, just copying stuff I've seen around or looked up online. For inspiration for colours and patterns I like Kaffe Fassett's books and also a book called Quilted Planet.

It does take a long time when you do it by hand - my squares one took over a year - but that's one of the things I like about it, that it's slow and absorbing.

I love Islamic geometric designs, I find them endlessly fascinating. Unfortunately they often involve inset seams when you consider them as patchwork. Small, fiddly bits aren't all that bad if you use foundation piecing though.

You might like some of Kaffe Fassett's designs if you like geometric stuff. He's also very good at explaining technique IMO. If you're a knitter you probably know the sort of designs he does already.

How long it takes me depends on the design, some go together very quickly and some take ages because they're fiddly. The quickest I've made was the butterfly cot quilt, it was probably around 30-40 hours including quilting (I'm not very quick at all) over the course of 5 or 6 weeks. There are other things that I started and haven't finished yet, including a foundation pieced variation on a log cabin that was taking about 4 hours per 6" square, and I think I need to make 36 of them. It's really hard to judge how much time I spend on them because if I do an afternoon (say 3 hours) of quilting quite a bit of that time is also spent checking my email, putting on washing, having a snack, browsing through the book at other quilts, emptying the dishwasher etc. I'm not terribly focussed.

My tutor was saying, the other day, that hand quilting is a lot softer than machine quilting because the stitches are bigger and not so close together. I have only done hand quilting and always feel like machine quilting is 'cheating' somehow but it is much quicker - harder to unpick if you make a mistake I should imagine.

Part of the enjoyment of quilting though, is sitting in front of the telly, with your work draped over your knee, sewing away. I have a big hoop frame to keep the right sort of tension and make it easier to see what you are doing.

i have a lot of kaffe fassett's knitting books. i've even knitted a jersey! 32 colours - that was a challenge. it was for dd1 and she refused to wear it.

If you want to do it in front of the telly then applique is as good a place to start as geometric patchwork, probably better as the thing that makes geometric patchwork quicker is being able to use a machine.

Perhaps start with a couple of applique cushion covers in different designs. If you make them up in the same size blocks as the quilt is going to be then you can always use them in the quilt if they turn out well.

good idea - i can do a few squares until they're half decent and then start.