Easy Big Stitch Hand Quilting Tutorial

[Music] [Applause] hi i'm emily from homemade emily jane in my previous video i covered all of the basic essentials that you'll need for hand quilting and in this video i'm going to teach you how to hand quilt so as a brief recap here are some things that you definitely need if you want to hand quilt with big stitch hand quilting stitches first off little scissors some thread this is size 8 cotton thread a thimble um and of course a little grippy it's kind of optional but it certainly helps and then i'm also going to use thread magic thread gloss and a needle threader for this quilt i've already marked my lines but i'll walk through that step i am doing pretty dense hand quilting um lines that are straight lines about a half inch apart so in order to mark the lines i will take my ruler and place it where i want the line to be on the fabric and then take a hair marker or a butter knife and drag it with some pressure across the edge of the ruler and it will leave me with the line that i am then going to sew on so i've already pre-marked everything that i'm going to be sewing today obviously you can see i've already quilted some of this quilt and i try to mark it in sections so that i don't get real tired of marking and finally of course you need a needle i don't remember if i mentioned that earlier but the needles that i use are from a pack of needles called the big stitch quilting needles and they are wonderful so to get started we will begin by threading our needle but first we gotta figure out how much thread we need so um sometimes you might just take off however much you feel comfortable with and snipping it and starting which is what i'm going to do but there's another way if you're doing smaller pieces and want to not waste too much thread you can actually like lay your thread on top of where you're planning on stitching and drag your thread off the spool that way and then you can know that it is roughly going to be the correct amount and then of course grab a few extra inches maybe six inches or so and snip there so i think this is a good length it's a little bit long so maybe here and you'll see when you fold it in half it's manageable but still a good length where i'm not going to be having to re-thread every couple of stitches the next thing i'll do before threading my needle is just very gently and quickly drag my thread through my thread gloss this just kind of helps keeping keep the thread from getting real tangled it's totally optional though if you don't have thread gloss don't sweat it and finally what we're going to do here is thread the needle so i'm cheating using a needle threader i definitely recommend it you first take your needle threader and stick the little metal part through the eye of your needle like that next you put your thread through the needle threader with a few inches of overlap and now you will pull your thread off the needle threader and now your needle has been threaded perfect the next step is to tie a knot in your thread at the tail so i'm just going to tie a nice simple knot here just a normal knot and it's about a centimeter away from the end and now we bury that knot this is one of my favorite parts of the hand quilting process because to me it is like magic so now in order to get started um i currently have not been using quilting hoop but if you use a quilting hoop that's great too i will take my left hand and put it underneath the quilt and hold it like pinching it with my thumb and my fingers i will then take my needle and thread and put it into the fabric probably about half an inch or an inch away from where i want the thread to actually show up so i'm going to put it on out here you want to go through the top layer of the quilt and into the batting but not through the backing so you're going to basically bury that knot inside the batting and that's what's going to keep it from coming undone later on and then bring the needle up where you want the stitches to start so now the needle is only through the top and the batting but if i show you the backing we do not see the needle or the thread so that is how it's supposed to be we're going to go ahead and grab the needle and pull it up and so now you'll see our thread came up but we have this knot sticking out so this is the fun part we get to tug gently in order to do this i always like to stabilize where i'm pulling in the opposite direction of where i'm pulling the force from and you just want a little snap and it'll pull the knot that you put in your thread through into the middle of the quilt so now it's buried so now we have our perfect beginning of our stitching and i will start again with our finger grip and be careful where you place your bottom fingers um i always like to kind of stitch towards my middle finger of my left hand but sometimes i poke myself so be careful and you're going to want to place the needle down about a quarter inch away from where it came up and then go through all three layers here and then come back up about a quarter inch away it's a rocking stitch here so in one stitch we're going down across and then back up and the goal is to have the same amount of thread showing on the front as it is on the back and the next stitch so then we use our thimble to push the needle through and then we use our grippy to pull it through the rest of the way and we have our first stitch and i'm going to do a couple more just like that so i'll explain it again we push down straight we rock across and then we come back up the goal is to be as straight as possible here in terms of like getting all three layers and one easy go one of the hardest parts about hand quilting is making sure that your stitches are even on the front and the back and that you're catching the back of the fabric in that rock part of your stitch [Music] so once you get the hang of doing the rocking motion for one stitch this is where things get really fun you can actually do more than one stitch at a time your needle will likely be at least like an inch and a half to two inches long so um you can fit more than one stitch on there so you'll go down just like before rock back up and then do another one down rock back up and then we can get two stitches on at a time so practice that for a little bit and you'll notice that it really speeds up the time that it takes to get through a line of stitches when you do two stitches at a time you could also do three we're really pushing it here but it's totally possible so there's three stitches on the needle and we pull it through and look they look great so the next thing i want to show you is when you get to the end of where you want your stitching to be but you still have lots of thread and lots of stitching nearby so we're going to carry our stitches in the middle of the quilt and the batting from one line to the next so watch closely as i finish this off i am going to carry the thread the needle to where i want my stitches to start at the next row like that and push it through one quick check though make sure that it is not showing on the back if you don't want it to be because that would be a big stitch so it's not you can kind of do it by feeling too you push it through and so now we're carrying our stitch literally in the middle of our quilt sandwich now because i stitch from right to left i rotate my quilt um to stitch in this other direction so now we'll continue stitching along here when you get towards the end of your string your thread you're going to want to tie it off and to do that i'm going to show you exactly how i make sure that it gets buried properly so i'm almost ready to to tie off and bury i've got one more stitch here i'll go ahead and put it down through all three layers up through all three layers and now what i'm going to do is tie a knot in the thread here and i'm going to use my needle to actually get that knot as close to the fabric as possible go ahead and put your needle back down through the hole carry it through inside the batting about an inch or so and then pull it back up so we are not in the back backing at all only through the batting and through the quilt top and we pull and now you can see we've got a little tiny knot just go ahead and pull tight to bury that knot into the fabric and then grab your scissors and snip your thread and then there we go your tail is gone and we have a nice knot securing those stitches in place so now the next step would be to start the process all over again get your thread thread your needle through your stitches thanks so much for watching this hand quilting tutorial i hope you learned something new the quilt that i've been working on is called the explore quilt pattern and it's actually free it's a free beginner friendly quilt pattern that you can get when you sign up for my email newsletter which i will link in the description below go ahead and find me on social media homemade emily jane and be sure to check out homemadelyjane.com for lots more quilting tips and tricks

Channel: Homemade Emily Jane

Views: 14,805

Rating: 4.9390864 out of 5

Keywords: Quilting, Learn to Quilt, Sewing, Homemade Emily Jane, modern quilting, modern quilts, quilting for beginners, big stitch hand quilting tutorial, easy hand quilting, hand quilting tutorial, learn how to hand quilt, beginners hand quilting, beginners quilting tutorial, quilting with perle cotton thread, quilting by hand for beginners, quilting by hand tutorial, beginners big stitch hand quilting, easy hand quilting tutorial, hand quilting, hand quilting easy, how to hand quilt

Id: l6HmLWU4VsE

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020