Big Stitch Quilting Basics

[Music] [Applause] hi welcome back to quilting with me steph walker otherwise known as stitching mama today we are going to be looking at one of my favorite quilting techniques the big stitch quilting method now this is a beautiful and very versatile way of quilting your projects and believe me there are several different techniques and several different tools i'm going to show you today just a few of the tools that i find really useful and a couple of techniques that you might want to try if you're giving this method a go now you've finished your epp project or you've machine pieced a beautiful quilt what do you do now well now is the point where we want to think about our wadding or batting and our backing and depending on your project there's a few different options available now if you're doing something as simple as a mug rug a wool hanging a table runner you're going to want to look at something a little bit thinner not too heavy when you're going to be sort of thinking about quilting it so i personally use a kind of polyester synthetic wedding it's cheap it's very easily available and it comes in a variety of weights you'll see these being sold by the ounce the lower the ants the thinner it is so for example the what i quite often use for things like my wall hangings and my mug rugs is this it's a two ounce uh polyester wadding or batting as some people call it very thin very very light because if you're using these like table runners and stuff you're going to be putting things on top of them they're going to get like you don't want too much puffiness or too much definition in your quilting you just want it to be nice and light and thin and so this is really perfect for that um obviously you know it is very very cheap readily available there is a chance that obviously with continued washing it may degrade but it's really easy to pick up um if you're looking more in the terms of an actual quilt you're going to want something a little bit thicker um so for example you might go for a six or i think this is an eight ounce one right here they sell them in big bundles like this so it's a little bit thicker for the smitten right behind me um i decided i wanted that one to be a winter quilt so i went ahead and picked up a super thick 14 ounce very very thick but so warm and snuggly and um you probably can't see it on the camera but i have actually already started to hand quilt the smitten um and it gives when you do quilt it it gives these big beautiful defined bits when you do your quilting i'm actually really enjoying seeing how amazing that's coming out there is also lots of other options there are full cotton options there is something amazing called quilter's dream which feels amazing literally just please go into a shop and have a feel because it's it's incredible um it's not too thick but it's really kind of snuggly and you know it's going to be really warm and it's really really nice to sew a bit more expensive however which is why i don't have as much of it because it's just when you do a lot of quilting projects slightly less cost effective um what i do really recommend these are all personal preference as always so please go into your local hobby shop your haberdashery wherever you get all of these things ask them about the battings and the warnings that are available and have a feel feel is really important you can give them a good squish have a feel of them see what you think works best for your project so once we have that bit sorted we're gonna end up basting it on basically our quilt project onto it that's something i'm gonna i cover in a completely different video so i'm not gonna uh go over that heavily today um so whether you have thread-basted or used pins or uh safety pins we're not gonna worry about that right now but it's gonna be basted on so here comes the point already of kind of diversion lots of people who do hand quilting techniques will have already put on the backing which is a fabric that goes on the back of your project and will have already bound sometimes the project before they even start the quilting um there is a way that i'm going to show you in a minute called popping your knot which means that your knot doesn't get shown on the back and you can still see your stitches and actually the back then gets quilted too i personally don't like doing that i don't like seeing my stitches on the back um i don't enjoy constantly popping my knot i find it really frustrating and irritating so me personally i quilt um through the batting and the main bit and then at the end i add my fabric and binding completely separately so all stitches are hidden and the back is plain entirely personal preference so we have i'm going to work on this log cabin hexagon piece which i'm gonna quilt and turn into a mug rug so i'm gonna get this warded up and ready to stitch with you let's head over to the work table okay welcome to the work table so we're going to start off by having a quick look at a few different examples of big stitch quilting a big stitch quilting is called that because as you might imagine the stitches are much much bigger than we would normally see in quilting and therefore we almost kind of make it a feature of our actual piece at the same time now just because it's called big stitch quilting doesn't mean it has to be huge great stitches and in fact really they don't even really need to be that big at all it is entirely up to you about how you want your project to look and what you want to do so i have a variety of different stitch lengths depending on the project that i've been working on for example this is my little pumpkin wool hanging that i made recently because it's getting autumnal um and you can see that my stitches are quite big on this one um i've also used contrasting colors to try and make them a little bit more of a feature so you can see them and if actually this i've also included a little bit of embroidery too um on this which is another kind of hexagon mug rug like we're going to work on in a little while um i've used some relatively bigger stitches so they are kind of a feature in some cases i've tried to choose colors which blend a little bit so they don't pop too much uh but you can definitely see the stitches there um on that one and this one is a project that i'm working on for my niece actually a wall hanging and on this one uh instead of like for example these ones because i've been a little bit more like trying to follow the lines you can see i've followed uh the lines around this one and this one i've gone a little bit more artistic this one i've decided to go full out for a complete design for the quilting using these uh circles um and if you take a look you can see that my stitches are big but not too big they're still kind of neat and tidy you can see a little bit my marking underneath there too when that goes away it won't be it'll look a bit better um in terms of thinking about what pattern you want to do you can there's so many options as with everything you can follow the lines and just kind of pick out various features you can do straight across cross hatching or you can go for an actual pattern now you can even buy templates for these patterns but most of them are quite easy to hand hand draw out yourself um so for example this one um i decided to go with kind of like well they were kind of concentric circles i only wanted the edges of them for the white and then i wanted to kind of follow the lines of what would be i suppose traditional kind of pumpkin lines uh on the inside of the pumpkin on this one and this one i went for a pattern now i didn't buy a pre-made template for this what i actually did was i drew i cut out some little circles and i made i folded one in half and then half again i used that as kind of a baseline and then on the card ones i then drew where those lines were and then i popped it on here like this so i like started at the corner i drew my first one and then i when i made my next one i lined up where the edges of the previous circle were and then i drew my next one and i went along and along along and up and up and up and it built up into this beautiful pattern and take a look at online you can find some like i said pre-made templates which are really great they're kind of plastic and they've got bits cut out of them so you can just lay them on draw in the grooves and it marks out on your template now marking your patterns out there are a few different options um you can use one of these so this is one where you don't leave any actual marks it actually just you press down and it just kind of makes a little crease i guess in your fabric which then you can press out later and the advantage of that is that it does not leave any behind any markings at all um it can be a little bit tricky to work with i sometimes find that it's a bit difficult especially when we're coming to curves um but it's a really really good option as a quilting marking tool and super kind of easy cheap nothing to worry about something i use a lot of is these these are frixion pens and they're actually not designed for fabric i think it was an unintentional by-product but it's basically a pen that you write on paper with um so you write you can write on paper like this and then you use the little rubber tip at the end to generate friction and heat to rub it away and you could also press this with an iron to get rid of the markings and now this is something that i use all the time for my you can get them loads and those colors um i was recently alerted to the fact that in kind of very very very cold temperatures the lines can come back and on certain fabrics they can do what we call ghosting which is where you can just see the markings a little bit um in my experience none of my projects have experienced that coming back yet however if you're doing a wall hanging where it's going to go on a really particular cold wall you might want to be a bit more careful about that there are also amazing chalk pens fabric pencils air and water soluble pens available which are amazing at the moment these just happen to be my personal preference so i don't have any of those but it's worth looking up fabric marking pens and seeing which ones you think might work for you um so i've decided with this one this is one of my hexagon log cabin mug rugs i have based it and i'm using the thin wedding um and i've decided that i'm just gonna follow the lines on this one i'm not going to do a straight all over pattern just going to follow the lines around it so one thing that i am going to use is a hoop now i don't actually have a quilter's hoop actual quilter's hoops are kind of thicker and they have a much bigger bolt on the top here so they can withstand uh lots of thick layers um i have actually struggled to find to get hold of one of those here in the uk and so i'm using just an embroidery and a plain old embroidery hoop you don't need one of these i personally just find that they are very very helpful for keeping my fabric stable and in one place and also it's just more comfortable to hold on to you don't want it super tight there still needs to be a play a bit of play in there but it's just more comfortable for me um again it's trial and error see what you feel i think works best for you so i'm hooped up and ready to go but what am i gonna use so there are again a wide variety of options uh starting out with your very basic cotton um so i've used basic cotton on the pumpkin and i decided to use i used this basic white in the middle and i used a basic orange on the outside very cheap basic cotton thread or polyester thread um it's okay to work with but i think if you're working exclusively on quilting maybe might be worth spending some money in getting something that's a little bit more uh that's got kind of a better reputation for holding because it does snap i think you're pulling this thread through multiple times um so something like a 50 weight cotton would be a really good idea next thing you can also use is this cotton uh i think it's class i think it's pronounced pearl it's actual it's actually spelt i don't know if you can see that there look um i've got a very light cotton uh pearl that i really like to use you can get this in different thicknesses and weights as well up to really really thick i actually really like to use the very very light thin one and it's a really beautiful thing to stitch with it does get a little bit tangled so just be aware and you could also use embroidery thread embroidery silks now this is something that i do actually use a lot of i love lots and lots of quilters i do not like using this i personally really like it it's cheap it comes in a wide variety of colors and textures actually and so i'm actually using uh on this one i'm using a uh it's a satin embroidery thread so it is really shiny and it's got a beautiful kind of sheen and finish to it it is super super prone to tangling however which does make my life a nightmare but i'm willing to deal with that for the sake of how beautiful it looks um it is entirely personal preference and it might be worth picking up a few different things to see what you prefer to use and again i think it's also down to project so you know one project might not you know might call for something completely different like i said my pumpkin i felt was better with the plain cotton sewing thread you know something else i might go with something different i'm actually going to go with the cotton pearl for this uh in this instance and then our next thing we need is our needles um i personally love john james needles they are my absolute favorites um and they sell them in these cute little uh they're called pebbles and you can buy specific quilting pebble and it means that you have a variety of sizes and eye sizes as well and different thicknesses all in one uh safe space and you can store them all in here i love this this is brilliant it's one of my favorite things ever um my last thing that we use as an absolute must is a thimble please please please buy yourself a thimble if you are hand quilting you are going to end up with holes in your fingers believe me find yourself a really nice thimble that fits nicely this is my absolute favorite this is a prim ergonomic um it's kind of silicone around here it's a really comfortable fit they do them in lots of different sizes and it has these deep little ridges that you can put your needle in and push it through something that i don't yet have that is on root is something called a thimble it which is like a little silicone sticky that you put on your on your other finger to protect it because what you might find which i'm going to show you in a minute when you're quilting you're putting through from this side but you're actually feeling with this finger on this side and you're going to get stabbed a whole bunch of times this finger is usually i can barely feel anything in this finger now because i've stabbed it so many times i don't have them with me right now but i highly recommend them i've run out i need more and you can reuse them multiple times actually um i think i think i think one of them might be reused like four or five times um you just kind of peel it off and stick it back onto a little piece of paper um seriously look them up thimble dots is another one i think they're called sometimes they're like little leather patches but they just stick on your finger and they just kind of help to save that finger that's on the back here okay so as i said i'm gonna be using the cotton pearl for this i'm gonna pull out one of my needles and thread up now because some people will uh some people will just want to um have their backing on already sorry lost my train of thought um some people already have their backing on um i know that's not how i work but i am going to show you what to do if you do already have your backing on there um so that you can do what we call pop your knot so that although you'll see your stitches on the back you will not see your knot on the back okay because that's not what you want you do not want to see a big bunch of knots and when it comes to uh to this because you're going to be doing quite a lot of sewing lots of people are very tempted to pull off a whole ream of thread and then it gets tangled it splits please don't do that not only that you're really messing up your shoulder because you're doing these big great big stitches and you're not going to be as accurate either okay what you want to do okay is you want to uh so i was hold the needle like this okay and i measure out just beyond my forearm so about there um and that's where i cut it okay um yes it might seem you might like you're going to have to change your thread more often but you know what actually you're going to save time because you're not going to be untangling you're not going to be re-threading because your thread has snapped and you're going to be doing your body a huge favor by not making enormous elaborate kind of big motions with your stitches okay so a forearms width is all you need okay i do not want to see anyone doing anything longer than that okay all right so i'm going to show you on this side how to pop your knot as if it was the backing okay so just imagine that this is my back right now okay and i want to start my project okay the first thing i'm gonna do is obviously i'm gonna put my my point through okay when it gets to this point this is if this is my back and i'm i've got my uh my backing fabric on i'm not going to want to see that knot am i take a look at that ugly no okay i'm going to want to get rid of that okay so i'm going to do something called popping your knot now this needs practice okay you are actually gonna pull that knot through the top layer of fabric only okay so through your through your backing only okay you do not want to pull it through completely so you kind of have to control how you're going to do this okay and it does make a little pop sound you ready you hear that that was a little pop okay now mine has come out because i've pulled it too hard okay and also because there's nothing on the back okay but what you would do is you would pop that through i'll show you again okay okay so we're gonna go like this okay we're literally just gonna pull it so it pops through that fabric okay pop there we go oh stayed in that time okay and then what you do is you just kind of give it a little bit of a rub with your nail or your finger it helps that will mean that the uh the weave will close and the hole will disappear but also it will help to bury that knot give it a rub both sides it'll help to bury that knot into the wadding and it'll stay there and then you've got no knot okay and you do the same again at the end okay so at the end i'll show you how to finish as well so when you've finished and you want to change threads or you're finished okay um you're going to have your knot so uh imagine i've done a couple of stitches and i'm going to come this way now am i not i don't want to see that not do i okay so what you actually want to do hang on let's we can always pull them out can't we okay let's put in a couple stitches so let's imagine uh i need to finish okay so i'm gonna put this in up here okay sometimes it gets stuck like that okay now i'm gonna do a quilt as a knot okay so i'm gonna put that through here i'm gonna keep that open and i'm gonna pull that so that that thread is gonna finish right on there i'm gonna put my thumb on it so it stays really close can you see i've got that knot real tight to there what i'm then going to do is i'm going to make a stitch and i'm going to try and go in where that is if i can it's much harder to do this on camera guys when you're not doing this on camera it's so much easier you can just see what you're doing okay so i'm going in where that knot is i'm coming up further away it doesn't matter where because you know we're not gonna you're not gonna see it later okay there we go this is another way of popping your knot on the top okay so we're gonna gently pull pop did you hear the pop okay and it's gone i'm gonna rub it rub it rub it to make sure that it's nice and buried and then that hole disappeared and that hole's gone and now i can just literally pull this slightly up like that so it comes through a little bit trim it and that's gone too um now that's not generally how i do mine because i don't faff with having the batting the backing fabric on the back honestly i would just much rather do mine straight through the wedding and the fabric only because then also if i do mess up any stitches and it gets tangled and i don't realize until later then i haven't got a whole bunch of fixing to do i'm just going to pull these ones that we did out for now there we go we don't need this uh so i personally will stitch uh straight through the wadding and the top layer of my fabric and add mine separately so for this i decided that i'm going to go around so i'm literally just going to come up maybe not too close to the edges of the piecing okay um generally it's just a basic running stitch so we're just gonna running stitch across it's entirely up to you how big you want the stitches to be um i like mine to be kind of just about you you'll find yourself becoming quite consistent quite quickly uh but generally kind of about that size if that makes sense um and you want to try and make them as even as possible so try and make sure the distance between your stitches is the same length as your actual stitches themselves okay and you want to keep it nice and consistent because you don't want to see a whole bunch of like it would look really awful right now if i had a really tiny tiny tiny little stitch and then a massive stitch they want to be nice and consistent now as you can see i'm kind of sewing as i would normally um just kind of in and out and under i put my hand under and i pull it out so i'm still kind of feeling underneath with this finger um just so i can feel it come through but i'm still kind of swapping around a lot one method that lots and lots and lots of quilters like to use is called rocking it's not something i like to use but i will show you how it works and this is one where you definitely need one of those thin blitz on this end okay so you're going to want to put your needle in okay like right here okay and you're going to want to slot it into one of your little holes on your this is where your thimble comes in really really handy okay and you're almost going to kind of angle it so you're going to put that in until you feel it hit that finger on the back you're gonna angle it up because that way you know it's gone through all the all the layers okay and then you're gonna push it up now as you can see mine's gone really far away i'm not actually good at this method at all so i'm going to just pull it out and try again and actually i find a hoop kind of hinders this so i'm going to remove it there we go it's not something that i feel very comfortable with i guess it takes practice um i have tried it several times some quilters just absolutely swear by it it's not for me though okay so there we go i'll pop that like in there i can feel it on the other side so i know it's gone through all my layers and i'm gonna there we go then rock it back okay this is called a single loaded needle when you're doing one stitch okay lots of people like to double load their needle or triple load which means i'm gonna go back in again up gonna feel through out yep there it says it's through and i'm gonna rock it back load it up okay that's a double load and some people will even go as far as a triple load so i'm gonna go up again oh there it is yeah fill it in my finger and i'm gonna bring it back on up and then push through um and it means you have a whole bunch of stitches and it's interesting because they do look different so if you can see these are the ones that i did by the rocking method and these are the ones that i did my normal kind of regular running stitch sewing away they look a little bit different and i find they actually quilt up a little bit different i actually find that i don't like the way that this comes out i prefer this way but it's worth trying and seeing if you feel comfortable with it it's probably essentially if you're thinking about kind of triple loading your needle every time you're going to get through a project really quickly um because you know you're going to kind of do multiple stitches uh in one go and i know you do get quite a big rhythm up with rocking um i just for me i don't like it but you know personal preference um and i do really really recommend that you try different things it might be worth making almost like a little sampler like a basic project up like a maybe like a mug rug or a small wall quill and trying out a few different versions a few different techniques you know maybe have maybe have it so that you do a few stitches and different kinds of threads and see what feels most comfortable for you and see what you think works best for your project it really is quite a simple but effective way of quilting your projects and i just think it's really quite charming i think you know we've worked whether you've done it by english paper piecing and hand stitching or on the machine these are handmade items that you've worked really hard on so you know i don't see any reason why you know seeing these big beautiful stitches would be a problem some people don't like that some people think it's amazing i'm one of those people that thinks it's amazing um so please do give that a try you can do all sorts of amazing beautiful things with this big stitch quilting um whether you hide your stitches by matching the color or making them uh more obvious and making them a feature of your quilting um i think that you'll find it's quite a freeing method if you're like me i'm an absolute perfectionist um and i found this just very freeing it was just really kind of easy comfortable and it you know it was okay that my stitches were showing and i found that really great uh so hey go ahead give it a try and see what you think i'm sure you'll be in love with it in moments thank you for joining us today to have a look at this big stitch quilting technique i really hope you're ready to pick up a needle and thread and give it a try it's definitely seeing a big revival in the quilting world and you can see why it's versatile it's beautiful and it has so much charm it really has some great ways to make your quilting projects pop if you would like to see more content from us you can subscribe to the channel you can like the video feel free to share it with all your friends and family and you can even leave us a comment on here don't forget we would love to see how your progress is going we'd love to see if you give this a try you can head over to our instagram stitch it mama or one word and and feel free to tag us in some projects we'd love to see how you get on i hope that you are all staying safe and taking care of each other and i look forward to seeing you all very soon [Music] bye

Channel: Steph Walker

Views: 3,003

Rating: 4.681818 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: QdvkDScFK7M

Length: 30min 14sec (1814 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020