I am sneaking in some time (slacking off from garden and kp duties if you really want to know) to work on the baby and doll quilts. I’ve pin basted, so it is on to machine quilting.
I am using my beloved machingers quilting gloves, denim sharp needles (in this case a 70/10 will do), and a Little Genie Magic Bobbin Washer.
Yes, I know I could use a new pair of gloves. But hey…you can see how well I like them by how worn they are!
Since I am going to begin by stitching in the ditch, I don’t need decorative thread. I’ve chosen 100 wt. WonderFil Invisifil 103 for the bobbin and Sulky Premium monofilament for the top. These are fine threads that won’t add weight to the quilt and will virtually disappear in ditch quilting.
I stitch in the ditch for two reasons.
- I can remove safety pins while stitching, which in turn, removes some of the weight of the quilt, and removes obstacles when I get around to free-motion quilting.
- Since I am quilting on a domestic machine, as opposed to a long-arm, I feel the need to stabilize my quilt sandwich for free-motion quilting.
I am using a walking foot to evenly feed the layers as I stitch.
I like to begin by bringing up the tails. This is habit from free-motion quilting, and it isn’t absolutely necessary for ditch quilting. But it does make it convenient to cut off the tails later. I lower the stitch length to zero and gradually increase it to the length that I prefer, about a 3 on my machine…you may prefer a different length. There are no quilt police to say that I am wrong and you are right. (Lucky for me!)
Here’s how the stitching looks on the front of the doll quilt:
And on the back of the doll quilt:
And then I realized how silly I was for using the monofilament at all (You never do silly things, do you?), so I switched to the WonderFil Invisifil for both the top and bobbin threads to work on the baby quilt. And I was silly, just in case you were asking yourself this ever since I gave my thread choices, because the Invisifil thread is so fine that it is all that is needed. Duh!
So here is how the baby quilt looks after stitching with Invisifil thread:
Oopsies…missed the ditch a little bit!
Had I had my thinking cap on (which is almost always missplaced these days), I would’ve switched to black Invisfil for the bobbin thread. Why? Because the backing on the baby quilt is black. Lucky for me, it worked out anyway.
LC's Cottage 