Hand Quilting Great Granny Stars With Lessons in Straight Line Quilting
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I have embarked on a new quilting project. While it is obviously going to take some time to do, I decided that I would like to hand quilt it. It is the Great Granny Stars Quilt.
Great Granny Stars Quilt and Pattern
Here it is laid out with batting and backing. I have used a plain white backing and batting which is nice and white.
There are lots of good reasons to hand quilt this one. It is a pretty big quilt and while I could do it on a machine I think the result will be better with hand quilting.
Nothing fancy, just lots of straight lines is my plan. So far I have quilted diagonally through the centre of all the Great Granny Blocks Scrap Great Granny Square Block Tutorial and the Scrappy Star Sashings Scrappy Star Sashings to create a big diagonal grid. This has stabilised the whole quilt and now made it easier to continue with the rest.. I did not mark the quilt as I am just following the direction of the pattern of the blocks.
Today I am sharing some of the progress and hopefully inspiring you to do a bit of hand quilting.
If you are stuck at home or even not feeling well, this is an excellent way to pass some time but still achieve something closer to a finished quilt.
In a previous post All In Hand – Lessons In Hand Quilting I discussed some of the lessons I have learned so far with hand quilting. Today I will add something further to these comments.
More About The Hoop
What I have realised with this quilting practice is that it is not a good idea to alter the tension on the hoop unnecessarily. My experience has been that altering the hoop tension will also lead to altering the stitch lengths. A very tight hoop will mean that the stitches will be larger as the tension in the hoop will increase the difficulty of the rocking of the needle motion. A looser hoop will enable smaller stitches as the needle can come in an out of the quilt more easily.
A Bent Needle
As the quilting progresses it is not unusual for the quilting needle to develop a bit of a bend (or even break) with the tension which is applied to it. A bent needle can lead to deviated stitches so change the needle when you suspect it is no longer straight.
Cleaning Up the Seam Allowances
Rookie mistake, but, having a completely white background does mean that some stray threads and slightly excessive seam allowances of the darker fabrics will show through and create a bit of a shadow. I thought that I had cleaned it up quite well. however it does demonstrate that being a bit more vigilant would pay off!
It is all a learning curve.
As a post script. I had a lovely comment from Gretchen. She advised getting a superfine crochet hook which can carefully remove some of those stray threads from under the quilt top. Great advice for us all. Thank you Gretchen. 🌸
That is all for today. Hope you are finding time to stitch. I will post again with further progress down the track.
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like
Hand Quilting Scrappy Thousand Pyramids and
Bias Binding for Hexagon Quilt and
Scrappy Jacob’s Ladder Quilt Reimagined
Happy sewing.
Susie
© Susan Stuklis 2023