Hand Quilting 101

[Music] hi i'm elian from patchwork and poodles and welcome to hand quilting 101 we're going to cover all the basics that you need to know to be successful at big stitch hand quilting just a quick note before we begin i really recommend if you are brand new to big stitch hand quilting to start with a small project for example this christmas stocking here you can make placemats you can make the stocking you can make pillows throw pillows anything smaller a mug rug just to get the feel of hand quilting before you commit to a really big quilt it also helps to just understand how you maneuver the fabric and then you're not dealing with layers and layers of fabric as you will be with a big quilt so something to keep in mind even a wall hanging or baby size quilt is a good starting project to jump into hand quilting another option is to add hand quilting as accents to a mostly machine quilted quilt so this is part of my misti mountains quilt you'll notice that most of it has been quilted by machine and then there's some hand quilted lines in between for some accent and some texture so this is also a really good way to start out because it allows you to be able to have a quilt that is secured by your quilting so you're not worrying about anything shifting and really allow you to play with hand quilting and not worry about a whole bunch of other things so those are some things to keep in mind as you're starting out um small projects as accent quilting on a mostly machine quilted project and then definitely as your skill grows and as your confidence grows you're able to tackle big quilts all 100 hand quilted the biggest quilt that i have hand quilted is a queen size quilt which currently lives on our bed so with that let's talk about materials you're going to need the quilt that you want to quilt today i am going to show you on this wall hanging size of my bare path quill pattern this pattern is available in my shop so you can find it if you click on the link in the description below this is a good size to start out with it's a 26 by 26 inch square and so it's going to allow us to be able to play with hand quilting play with moving the quilts around without worrying about it being too big i have gone ahead and basted my quilt top to my batting and my backing i've gotten everything ready to go i really prefer to spray baste especially when hand quilting i'm not worrying about my thread getting snagged by safety pins or anything like that so my preference is spray basting i have also thread basic quilts which i also like to do and you can you can use pins if you're going to use pins i would try to plan out your quilting first then place your pins in accordance where they're not going to be in the way of your quilting so for this one for example i'm going to quilt right near these points i know i want to do that so if i was going to put pins i might put a pin here one right in the middle i wouldn't want to put one here where it might interfere so that's that note you're going to want to mark your quilt top for quilting so my favorite tools for marking are hair markers and chalk pencils i really like this generals brand of pastel chalk the benefit of this is it's the best one that i've found that really leaves a good mark that you can see and it doesn't disappear when i rub it vigorously this is important because if you're going to be marking your quilt for the design that you want to hand quilt on there you don't want halfway through to go well where'd my line go like what happened to these lines i drew they disappeared so this brand is really nice because they they stay but once you add some water to them they disappear one note two is that the i like the 4414 white and the 4473 light gray i wouldn't recommend any other color these two are the ones that come out really nicely and wash out really nicely the gray i use found any lighter colors the white obviously on any darker colors i also really love my hair markers this is a clover brand hair marker essentially it's a plastic blunt knife and when you have your ruler and you draw a line with your ruler it leaves a crease you're able to see that crease and be able to stitch on it next to it whatever you're doing with it and again this also once you wash it the creases disappear so it's something that's not going to last on your quilt i really stress every time that i'm doing anything marking my quilt my preference is to go for tools that wash out easily i get worried with things like water soluble markers that if you expose them to heat at any point they could potentially stay on your project forever and so that would be really sad so these are the ones that i like definitely experiment if you don't have a hair marker a good way to see if you're going to like it is to take a butter knife and that back edge of a butter knife and to mark with that so try that out see how it works okay so once you've got your quilt you've marked your quilt i've already told you we're going to go ahead and we're going to follow these half square triangles so i'm not going to go ahead and mark i'm going to eyeball it but when i get into these parts here of my little log cabin block i would then go ahead and mark whatever lines i was planning on stitching we need some thread there's definitely different threads that you can buy for hand quilting big stitch hand quilting you're looking for thread that's 8 weight to 12 weight so this is a thicker thread with thread the bigger the number the thinner the thread so on your machine you're using a 40 weight or 50 weight it's a thin piecing thread this is 8 weight 12 weight so it's a thicker thread you can get pro cotton which is one of these two there's definitely different brands out there this is a 12 weight i believe this is a 12 weight as well um so there's those on the market you can use some cotton threads a cotton crochet thread and a number 10 it's going to give you around the same thickness my preference is aura fill 12 weight i really like the ore fill for several reasons one is i found that they're really strong and durable they don't shred i've tried different kinds of thread that will wherever your needle is it starts to kind of shred that thread apart which is not something that you want so that and then they also they last there is a ton of thread on this spool i'm able to get many quilts out of it so it's nice to not worry about how many of these we have to buy to finish my quilt i don't know uh one one spool of ore fill will be plenty for your quilt top so i picked these four colors for my cool top here today i really like when picking colors for hand quilting i like to contrast i want you to see it i spent all this time stitching it by hand i'm not gonna hide that i want you to see my quilting so that's what i do so i've chosen this blue which we're gonna put on the outside here you're gonna see it nice and pop i've chosen this kind of sea foamy color which i think i'm gonna put on this blue color down here i've chosen this kind of like pinkish i'm not really sure what color this is um as far as like colors on the color scale but i really like it here i think that it's interesting if you looked at this thread you would you might not think that it matches my cool top but when i put it down here as a single thread it really pulls out the pink of the half square triangles and it really nicely fits i also really liked this one i thought that it was a nice mixture between the gold and the pink i'm not quite sure how i'm going to use it i might not use it but i like to pull all my colors i like to see what my options are before i get started so we're going to start with the blue i'm going to put the other ones aside what else do i need for hand quilting well there's only three more things that you need to make sure you have a pair of scissors it doesn't matter what scissors you have i could be using my big quilting scissors i like this little pair because it's easier to carry around with all my other things a symbol and some needles my preferred needles are milliner's needles the reason being that the eye of the needle is small this means that when i have a milliner's needle with some thread on it so think about it your thread is pretty thick and if the eye of my needle was big i would be getting a really bulky spot right where that you know the eye and the thread meet you've got two layers of thread the bulkier the spot when i'm going through all those layers and pulling there's a chance that i'm going to pull up some of my batting along with my thread that's going to show up on the front of my quilt top so that's always a concern with a bigger eye that's why i really like milliners i like that they are fairly rigid i'm able to not worry about them bending on me if you find that the eye of the milliners is a little small they are pretty small to get to get this thread on there i recommend embroidery needles as your next best thing they have a bigger eye but you're going to get about the same flexibility slash rigidness of the needle and the sharpness as well as the length so that's another good one to look at and then thimbles so i really like this clover all leather thimble as you can see this one's been well worn your thimble is going to sit on the middle finger of the hand that you you're going to use to stitch so make sure that it's got a comfortable tight fit if you don't have any symbols and you want to get started today and you have thread you have needles hopefully you have some scissors um stick a couple band-aids on your finger that sounds kind of weird i know but where the padding of the band-aid is stick it right here on the side we're going to use this finger to help push that needle through all the layers so it's really important to protect your finger if you don't have a thimble your finger is going to start to hurt after a while you're not going to be able to stitch as long and it's going to be sore for a couple days so you're not going to be able to stitch tomorrow so really then you're you know really waiting to be able to continue hand stitching so stick a couple band-aids on there instead um or else experiment with different symbols there's silicone on the market there's metal there's leather with metal there's silicone with metal um all sorts find the one that works best for you this is the one that i like so now we've covered all of the pieces that we need and we are ready to start quilting when i cut my piece of thread i like to cut a piece of thread that's about 36 inches about this length the reason is when you are stitching you're gonna have your thread mostly folded in half so pretend my knot is here you know i'm going to be using this to pull through you want to be able to pull all the way up and have your thread be completely pulled you don't want to do this whole thing where you pull all the way up your thread is still loose you have to come back and keep pulling at it um it just is going to slow you down so don't make your thread too too long a lot of people recommend like 18 inches which is so short and i don't like tying knots so i found 36 inches to be a good length for me the side that i just cut off the spool this is the one that is going to get the knot your thread is twisted right on a spool this is going to be more it's more than one piece of thread that's been wound and twisted together to make the weight that we need because it's twisted a certain way it's going to glide through your fabric a certain way which means that whatever end you cut off your spool that's the one that gets the knot i like to do just a simple knot so looks kind of like a pretzel right that's all you don't need your knot to be completely at the end we're gonna bury it into the layers so it's okay to have a little bit of a tail it's not a problem and i like to double knot we're gonna start quilting one thing to note when i'm hand quilting i always start and stop a half an inch from the edge of my quilt top why half an inch well i don't want any stitches to be cut off when i am trimming my quilt and binding it this is going to obviously be a problem because i don't want it unraveling i've just worked so hard to get it to look really nice i don't want it to end up unraveling so if i go in half an inch i'm ensuring that there's no way i'm going to be cutting that much off my quilt top so that knot is going to be completely safe i'm not going to have any chance of hitting it snagging it cutting it my quilting is going to be secure so not just the knot but if i'm stitching i'm going to stop half an inch before the edge and then you know travel on to the next spot that i need to go when you're trimming your quilt square you can often end up trimming up to an eighth of an inch off so that leaves us three-eighths of an inch of play where from the end of our stitching to the end of our quilt top that might seem like a lot of room and you're saying isn't that going to look silly well no because we have a quarter of an inch binding that we're going to add onto our top of our quilt top so once that binding is on that stitching is going to look like it just finishes right where your binding starts when i'm starting and i'm starting on an edge so for example i'm going to start right here instead of going through the back pulling it in and burying my knot because i'm on an edge i'm going to lift up my batting exposing the layer between my batting and my backing i'm going to slip my needle through and have it come up where i want it to start i prefer to do this because in the center of my quilt i will definitely be burying my knots into the layers and i'll show you how i do that but if i don't have to do it on the edges i prefer not to okay so right about here so if you think about it this is a quarter of an inch so that's about right about half an inch i'm going to start when i'm hand quilting my needle is resting on the side of my thimble right about like this right so it's being pinched by the pointer finger and the thumb it's resting on my middle finger my left hand is actually guiding the fabric so you'll see i'm going to bunch the fabric up i'm holding on to it i'm going to help guide it onto that needle i'm going to go down help guide that fabric back up in a rocking motion you'll see that needle is resting on that thimble the thimble is going to push the needle through so i can grab it on the other end and create my stitches so again the needle is sitting on our thimble we're going to poke it in using that left hand to help guide the fabric where we want it to go push with the thimble and pull so here we are we've got a couple stitches down you'll notice that now we have to go a different direction so i put i picked this specifically because i want to show you if you were doing a big quilt what you would have to do i could get one last stitch in but then i have to go the other way so what i need to do is i need to rotate my quilt top so that i'm always stitching in a direction that's favorable to me which is away from me again i'm going to bunch that fabric up with my left my left fingers underneath are guiding the needle so when i poke through i can feel that needle come through with my finger i'm not pricking my finger but i know that it's coming through that's making sure that i am hitting all those layers i'm not accidentally missing the backing push with the thimble and pull down up down up down up you can choose to make your stitches as big or as little as you wish some people like really long chunky stitches some people like shorter stitches mine tend to be a little under a quarter of an inch so this is the stitch length that i naturally gravitate to so it's just become mine let's look at what it looks like on the back so our stitches on the back look fairly similar to the front you'll notice that this guy here is way smaller this one way smaller than the other ones that's okay so our backing it's fine if you accidentally skip the stitch it's fine you don't have to go back and fix it we just want to make sure that we are catching all of the layers and that our front is what we want them to look nice and even as long as you're catching them on the back you're good to go i want to talk about a strategy for quilting when you're hand quilting this is also a strategy that i am use when i'm machine quilting what i like to do is go in first and put what i like to call registration lines so i'll go around the quilt top so for example we started here i'm going to follow this all the way to the end here then i'm probably going to go ahead and do the same thing on all of them so all the half square triangles that are pink are going to get outlined with my blue thread then i'm going to start on the corners and i might do a couple lines here and a couple lines in the corner a couple lines here a couple lines in the corner this is a smaller quilt um it's not as big of a deal but let's say that this was a really big quilt i would most definitely do a little bit a little bit a little bit a little bit a little bit a little bit etc and then i would come back in and i would fill in the areas in between what that means is that even though i've nicely basted this a lot of hand quilting you'll notice just a little bit that we quilted we started this way we shifted the cool top the other way we shifted it back so we can start going this way again i'm holding the quilt off and crunching it up you're you're manipulating that fabric a lot and so by manipulating it a lot things can shift and move on you so it's really helpful to put in those registration lines that way you know that nothing's moving right if you've got some stitching here here here here it's not going to go anywhere and then you can go in and you can fill in those areas in between so that's just the strategy that i use a lot i find that it just helps to keep everything nice and even where i want it to be and it minimizes my frustration and then another thing too that you might notice is i don't use a hoop i don't like a hoop mostly because i use my left hand so much to help me so my left hand is gripping that fabric it's guiding it through all those layers a hoop would not allow me to do that so the way that i hand quilt i don't use a hoop i don't use anything i just have it really well basted and off we go if it's a really big quilt i might lay it on a table or on the floor and do my registration lines first so where everything's nice and flat i might do those registration lines and then all those areas in between then i'll take it and i'll snuggle up on the couch and do some hack quilting while i watch a video so that's something that i employ as well is just the idea that get those registration lines so nothing's moving and then yeah i sit on the couch and i snuggle and i hand cool to my heart's content so that's that let's talk about how to travel now we're not talking about a vacation to hawaii although that would be really nice no traveling means to move between the layers of your quilt to be able to start in a different location this is helpful if for example i have a lot of thread left on here but maybe this is all i wanted to do out of blue and now the next spot that i need to do out of blue is this spot right here well i could tie a knot bury it create another knot bury that knot and start here very possible i can also travel between the layers which means that you won't see my thread on the top and you won't see my thread on the back i'm going to move that needle within the layers of the batting to bring it to the spot that i want it to be traveling can happen two different ways we'll talk about the easy way first so for example i'm right here i need to travel to this spot right here i want to always make sure that i'm traveling i want to do my last stitch and so i'm going to bring my needle down to create that stitch but instead of going all the way down i'm going to travel within the layers so i use my left hand to just make sure that i can't feel that needle that it is really secure and then you'll see me kind of poke around to find that spot that i want to start back up on let's say it's right there and then before i lift my needle i kind of take a look and i say okay i can't see it on the front i can't see it on the back so that means i am in between those layers i can go ahead and pull my needle up and now i'm ready to start right here so that's one way that you can travel between the layers it's the easy way it works for anything that's the length of your needle or shorter let's go back to that first example though i'm right here and the next step that i need to quilt is right here well that's like three needle links away so how do i tackle that one i'm going to do what i did for the first type of traveling is i'm going to put my needle in i'm going to angle it towards my destination i know i'm not going to make it but i'm going to angle it that way my left hand underneath gripping that fabric i'm going to help travel through those layers i'm going to kind of scrunch it up a little bit let's see how much of it i can you know how far i can get before i need to surface again you can make sure you're not seeing it on the front or the back but it's really in between those layers and then i pull up now here's the tricky bit we're going to go back down and we want to make sure that we're in the same exact hole that we came up in so that we don't have a little dot right here that shows our thread i take my thread and i kind of pull it away so i can see where really it's living in that fabric because fabric is woven so you know you've got little holes in between those threads and that's where your thread came up um your threads between the fabric so that's where your your quilting thread came up so what you want to make sure is that you're going back down in that same hole so i've got my needle down in that hole i'm manipulate it through the layers coming up where i need it to be and when i pull through that spot there disappears because we went up and we went back down in the same hole we didn't leave any sort of mark now my thread is right here and it's ready to start quilting that area and on the back i hope you'll notice we did get a little stitch here so if i wanted to i could go back and fix that it's on the back it's tiny i'm not going to worry about it i would worry about it if it was a really long stitch that could get snagged otherwise you're good to go so that's how to travel between the layers so that you can get from one spot to another this would be helpful on this quilt for example if i stitched all the way to here and i knew that i wanted to go all the way around this one and maybe i don't want to have just a separate piece of thread just for this little square i might stop here travel quilt this travel back and then continue on my way okay let's talk about how to bury a knot how to start in the middle how to bury when you finish in the middle that's the part that people i think get a little worried about because it makes this noise when you are popping it through the layers and it's a little scary but we got this we got this so i'm gonna have to do one last stitch it's gonna go right here so i'm gonna put a knot right about here you don't want your knot to be too close to where that last stitch is um it's just you want your knot to actually when they say berry they want it to go through that batting and really like secure itself within the layers of your fluffy batting so for that to happen we need a little bit longer than what our last stitch is going to be again i just do a simple knot nothing fancy and i like to double knot okay i'm going to go down and just like we did for traveling we're going to go through the layers a little bit but this time we're going to take our thread and our needle and we're going to poke it up through the back so we traveled a little bit of distance away from where our last stitch was and pull it through the back on the front you'll notice there's my knot when you are burying a knot what you want to do is i like to hold fabric right near where that stitch is going to be it just helps it to pop right into the layers so you might have heard it might not because i was jabbering but it just kind of popped right into the layers and now it's in my batting i'm going to go ahead and clip my thread here it's going to be similar similar process for starting in the middle of your pill top so i've done a double knot we are going to select to start on our center square so i am going to on my backing this time insert my needle travel a few you know a inch distance or so and then i flip it over just find out where that spot is that i want to start that's a good spot we'll start there pull that needle through all right so here's my knot and again same thing if you hold the fabric around it it helps to pop in easier so if i was just sitting here trying to do this yeah it gets a little like frustrating because you're like it's not going in but if you hold the fabric around it taut you can just give it a nice pop there we go and it goes through the fabric layers you'll notice that the tail of my thread is longer than my fabric so my knot's buried i can't pull it any further it's nice and taut so i have two options here i can either cut it with scissors snip which is totally fine what i like to do is i gently pull up the backing and then bury it so now our thread is here and we're ready to start hand quilting our little square so just one more time to show you how that would look i've got my left hand underneath grabbing all those layers we're now in the middle of our quilt so you can see how all the layers are just kind of falling over my left hand i just let them do their thing i'm not worried about all this fabric here it can bunch it can you know shimmy and do whatever i've basted it it's not going to go anywhere what i'm really worried about is keeping this area nice and flat for my stitching my needle is going to rest on my thimble i'm going to bring it down through those layers using my left hand to guide the fabric my left hand is almost like working like an accordion right like folding the fabric away and towards my needle push that through with that thimble and pull i find that i can work from right to left and from towards me to away from me but once i reach this part here i can't work left to right so i'm going to rotate my top and i'm in a good spot now to be able to go away from me again so all right so this is a good spot to practice our traveling again so we're gonna stick our needle into our fabric our quilt top travel between the layers until we come out at our next spot that we're going to quilt we look on the back we can see where we quilted it there's that gap here what this gap happens because our last stitch we traveled so we didn't finish and complete the stitch we moved our needle across that's totally fine that's how it's supposed to look you can see that some of mine are smaller and bigger stitches on the back i don't worry about the back what i worry is consistency on the front so that's hand quilting 101 we covered the supplies that you need how to prep your quilt top how to make some stitches how to bury your knots how to travel not to hawaii but i wish we were traveling to hawaii and everything in between be sure to check out my youtube channel for more tips and tutorials also my blog where you'll find a ton more information and if you like this bear path pattern and you want to make one too you can find it in my shop in both paper and pdf formats thank you so much

Channel: Patchwork and Poodles

Views: 64,991

Keywords: learn to quilt, quilting tutorials, quilting diy, patchwork and poodles, modern quilting, modern quilt, hand quilting, sewing for beginners, quilt tutorials, quilting tutorial, big stitch hand quilting, big stitch quilting, quilting how to, how to quilt, hand quilting tutorial, how to hand quilt, easy hand quilting, how to hand quilt for beginners, hand quilting for beginners, hand quilting for beginners tutorial, hand quilting without a hoop, hand quilting techniques

Id: zxl-arra-yE

Length: 31min 52sec (1912 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020