Long Arm Quilting #20: Carol’s Flannel Gets Quilted FOUR Times

When I told you I got a variety of quilts in last fall, I wasn’t kidding.  Among the bunch were a couple of flannel quilts, which were new experiences for me.

The first thing I noticed about flannel quilts is that their seams are much thicker than normal cotton quilts, especially if the seams are not swirled or flattened.  My machine is not calibrated to handle such thick seams, and to be perfectly honest, I did not want to make the adjustment in order to accommodate them.  The change would have to be made in the height of Darcy’s foot, and after reading the 2-page instructions on how to make the adjustment, I decided it was just not worth it for two flannel quilts.  Sorry folks – that’s one lesson you will not learn from me. 

I also noticed that flannel is “sticky”; that is, once you lay it down on top of the batting (this was Hobbs Heirloom batting), good luck adjusting it!  And because of the thickness of flannel, it’s impractical (especially on larger quilts) to load it onto the quilt top rail, because it gets too thick to roll.  So floating these flannel quilts is almost a necessity.

There’s also something I want you to take note of in this photo: see how wide the backing is in comparison to the quilt?  Well, that’s because this is the WRONG backing for this quilt.  I don’t know how the backings got mixed up considering my meticulous system of inventorying each quilt, but mixed up they were.  My advice to you, if you ever find yourself quilting multiple quilts for someone at the same time, double-check that you have the right backing fabric.  What should have tipped me off was the generous dimensions… no quilter is EVER this generous with their backing. 

For those of you who are sending multiple quilts out, you should name or number your various quilt components, and attach that information to the quilt, ideally in the same place where you have marked the centers of each piece.  I had quite a few people do that on their quilts, and it really came in handy.  And while I’m handing out advice, NEVER pin anything to the back side of your quilt top.  I can’t tell you the last time I looked at the back of someone’s quilt top before loading it, and especially if the quilt is floated, whatever you have stuck on the back is getting quilted in permanently.  Your top border front is the very best place for notes, because that’s where we start quilting.  But please don’t use straight pins anywhere you are marking; those are the worst!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been scratched & poked by someone’s wayward straight pin, and it does not put me in a good mood for quilting.

Anyway! Here’s the story of how I quilted this particular quilt four times.

Round 1 – The Feather

I initially decided to make this quilt my first attempt at feathers on a real quilt!  I have drawn & doodled enough feathers that I almost feel like I could do them blindfolded.  Unfortunately, my first attempt at a feather looks as if I was blindfolded:

I think that if this quilt were more of a consistent light color throughout, the backtracking wouldn’t be as noticeable, but where the stitching hits the dark colors, it just sticks out like a sore thumb.  I’m terrible at back tracking.  I know it’s a matter of practice, but I just like free-form stuff that doesn’t require as much precision.  I have no problem constructing a quilt with 1/4″ seams, but when it comes to quilting, I don’t like having to “color inside the lines.”  Quilting is my out-of-the-box experience. Maybe that’s why I hesitate to put a computer on Darcy; I don’t like the idea of precision-perfect quilting stitches coming out of my studio, it’s just not my thing.

However!  That doesn’t mean that I am OK with quilting that looks like crap, and that’s how I would describe this.  I actually knew this feather sucked before I was even half done with it, but instead of stopping at that point, I thought I’d keep going in the hopes that it would somehow look better.    That turned out to be a false hope.  So, I took the quilt off the frame, ripped out the feather, and started over.

Round 2 – The Freehand Spiral

After ripping out that feather, I decided to try a different block.  In this one, I quilted feathers again, this time in only the light triangles.  That turned out to look pretty good!  Then, I had a dark center to work on, and I decided to freehand some petals and spirals.  Yup, it’s another one I finished knowing it sucked, and then had to rip out again.

It was at this point that I started to suspect that it wasn’t necessarily the quilting that was the problem, but the thread color that I had chosen.  Maybe the thread was just too light to use in the dark areas.

Round 3 – The Stencil

After ripping out the petals & swirls, I tried a stencil instead:

I actually think this looks really good, which made me flip-flop on the thread vs. quilting debate in my head.  My quilting was just crappy, and crappy quilting just shows a lot worse when you have a high contrast between the quilt and the thread.

Round 4 – The Water Pattern

All the stopping & ripping and re-doing of the quilting put me behind schedule, so I actually had to take Carol’s quilt off the frame for a while so I could work on another customer’s quilt.  In the intervening time, I had a chance to reflect on the direction I was going with Carol’s quilt.  Although her quilt wasn’t very big, I did have a complicated quilting plan, and I still had no idea what to do in the other block where I’d removed the large feather.  I’d spent many hours on this quilt and didn’t really like where I was going with it.  So I made the hard decision to take out ALL the quilting, and start over from the beginning.

(This actually was an easier decision to make in light of the fact that I didn’t have to do the ripping.  I had a friend over, and she sat down and did it for me.  Bless her for doing that!  Otherwise Carol’s quilt would probably still be sitting there unfinished.)

I decided instead to switch to a variegated thread, and it gave me the opportunity to use some experimental thread from Superior.  They recently came out with a variegated line of So Fine in a 40wt, and they gave people the opportunity to purchase the experimental cones before they settled on all the colors.  So these cones have funny names like “EE” and “JJ.”  I selected a pretty blue & purple thread labeled “II”.  Now, since this is a brand new thread, there weren’t any tension charts for it, so I had to experiment a bit:

This thread had a very unusual tension setting, much different from anything else I have used up to now.  The TOWA reading on the bobbin was between 120-140 (normally it’s up around 200), the top tension had to be loosened a bit, the needle I used was 4.0MR (110/18), and I had to skip the center hole when I threaded it.  Maybe you’ll come up with a different combo, but that’s what worked for me.  It will be interesting to see what Superior says when they come out with an updated tension chart for this thread.  I believe they call it So Fine #40, and the color names are all Australian. 

After deciding on the new thread, I thought I would try a free-handed water pattern over the quilt.

Here’s a shot from the underside:

Isn’t that a cool look?  Like stained glass.  This was me laying on the floor under Mr. Darcy to take this photo.

I used this pattern because I actually have another customer quilt to do this on, and I thought it would be good to practice first.  It’s a lot like stippling, but is more fun to stitch.

Here’s the finished quilt from the back:

And here it is from the front:

Overall, I am much happier with the quilting and the thread choice.  I learned a lot about how the thread color can make or break the quilting, but that high-contrast between the quilt and the thread isn’t necessarily bad.  I also learned that… I don’t like feathers.  It seems like everyone is very impressed by feathers, and indeed I can appreciate their beauty and how great they can look on a quilt, but I just think they are not for me.  My friend WenR says that I’ll like feathers more when I accept the fact that my feathers are different from what everyone else does, and maybe if I stop thinking about & calling them feathers, I’ll be able to bring myself to put them in a quilt again.  We shall see!