How To Hand Quilt

[Music] so I'm here and I'm finally doing that hand call team tutorial I'm recording this on my phone and I'm still trying to figure out where to look I think the camera is right there even though I want to look at myself that's right there okay so you see my eyes kind of veering off to the side it's because I'm looking at myself and that you okay so first I'm going to talk about supplies and then I'm going to launch into how I pick my thread and then I'm just going to dive into I'm going to launch then I'm gonna dive into a simple running stitch hand quilting a running stitch and then finishing off by popping your knot and cutting your thread it's really really easy so first supplies if you've been following me for a while on my blog you know I love this leather thimble I have lots of other symbols that I've tried blog posts about about thimbles and this is really one of those things where you know if the Builder cheap try a few out decide what works for you practice you know maybe with all of them I know some people that put some bows on almost all other thinkers there are pads - I've tried those pads and I think I'm a little bit too wild and reckless of my needle for the pad to work because the pads are small they just stick to your finger pads and I was always missing the pad and hitting my skin and it was like why am I doing this when the pad would fall off so try a few different needles see what works for you for me really like this leather one if I get up really close let's see can you focus focus you can see that leather does kind of get a little bit worn down so every six months or depending on how often I am quilting and I get a new one they're pretty cheap you know so it's not like a huge investment a huge bummer when it goes south but eventually you will probably poke Holness if you're really getting after it like I do okay so we've talked about thimbles you're gonna want some kind of scissors you can get snips even just regular scissors work I always use a needle threader you can get these in big packs cheap big packs I've found that if you get the really cheap ones like fifty centers they just break on you so this is one by clover it has a needle threader on both sides I think they're supposed to be different sizes maybe I haven't noticed but I'll show you how I use this to thread a needle okay I have a blog post on needles I use these clover gold eye embroidery needles that's what I like because I use a really thick thread which I'll get to in a second but some people really like milliner's you can see the difference here these are quite a bit longer if you use regular cotton quilting thread that has the wax coating you're probably gonna see online that quilters are telling you just use plain old sharps maybe like a size 10 and that's because these are quite a bit shorter so I'm going to show you you see the milliner compared to the sharp quite a bit shorter so it really just depends on what's comfortable for you and what the red you're using you can also get these are is it called Long's they're very similar to sharps just a little bit longer but I like the reason I like these embroidery needles because the eye is bigger and with these sharps the eye is pretty small so if you're using we're gonna jump to thread if you using a thicker thread a yarn like thread like I'm gonna be using you're gonna want a little bit larger of it of an eye so you can get that thread through okay so let's jump to thread so I like to use number eight needles needle sizes it's kind of the opposite of thread so the larger your needle size the smaller the needle okay so the thinner the needle the larger the size so a little test if I had a size three and a size nine needle which one would be thicker the three so the three would be thicker than nine would be smaller so a lot of quilters they suggest using a ten let's say look you can see the size right here size 10 they suggest using a 10 and that's assuming that you're using a pretty thin thread maybe like a 40 weight thread well I like to use eight so with thread the smaller you get actually just like a needle I say opposite same I'm in same just like a needle this is thicker so it coincides with your needle so if I'm gonna use a thicker thread I'm probably gonna want to use a smaller size needle which is a bigger needle does that make sense so I like to hover around 6 7 so I get this pack and this pack runs anywhere from 10 to 3 3 being the center 10 being the edge I believe 3 to 9 is what it says and I kind of hover in the middle like around here like 5 6 7 8 not too picky again you just maybe try a few out to see what works for you because needles aren't that expensive so you can actually just get like I did a few different brands you know one day and I was like let's just see what I like but I did and I liked the gold I so oh I also some people really like sheiko needles I think they're insanely large ok these are tulip they're so big and it's a technique I'm not familiar with should she go and let me just pull this out I mean I feel like I'm crocheting with this needle it's so big and the eye is huge and you're gonna really have to yank to get that through the weave of your fabric so if you just made a quilt with regular cotton quilt weight fabric I mean this is gonna like just like harpooning a whale almost I feel like this could be wrong because I don't know much about show chic oh people who are using needles like this are not using tightly woven fabric they must be using a wider weave like a linen or a lemon anyway so I got these Toshiko needles just so I could see what the fuss was about and it wasn't a right okay threat so I have a couple different kinds I usually gravitate toward DMC I found that it's nice thick sturdy it has a nice Sheen it's relatively cheap I think a skein of this like 250 this is finca someone just gave this to me and so I used it and it's fine too I mean it's very very similar you can see they look really similar one's a little bit more squarish and shape both number eight so that's what I like you'll see a lot of common quilt weight thread companies that sell really great thread for your machine 5840 way and the smallest thread they're gonna offer you is twelve and twelve is great because it can still go in your machine so you can kind of get that yarn hand quilted look by sewing on your machine however if you use twelve weight in your on your quilt you're just gonna have a less noticeable stitch it's going to be a smaller thread and that's totally fine you can do that I just like the big yarn like thread I think it has a really stunning look and I'll Pan to a couple images my hand quilts while I'm talking about this anyway so use whatever you like use whatever is comfortable this is what I'm gonna use in this demo this is what I like so basic supplies are really simple all you really need is needle and thread and thimbles are optional the red needle threader is optional and you need some scissors and that's really it hey I let scrappy in so I pulled my phone down so you can see how I store my thread I just store it in two bins warm and cool and it's not very well organized but it works well enough for me so now I'm gonna talk a little bit about how do I pick my thread I think my phone's a little bit crooked you're gonna have to bear with me here so I'm gonna bring you back down and kind of talk about my process and picking thread now when I'm picking thread for machine quilting my rule of thumb is I matched my thread to the lightest color in my quilt so if my quilt has Navis and greens and then the background is cream chances are I'm gonna use a cream thread because I think really dark thread like if I were to go with a navy or once I went with black it has this medical look and that's totally a personal thing I've gotten into a lot of accidents in my life I've had a lot of stitches and when I see black thread or dark thread I immediately just think of Halloween and like all of the gashes I've had I've had 22 stitches on my forehead I've had such as on my lip had stitches on my legs is pretty bad I mean my parents were a crazy total wreck anyway okay so I'm gonna bring the camera back down and I'm gonna show you my process just in picking with hand quilting and hand quilting that's pretty similar except because I'm doing more of this decorative thing decorative stitch I get a little bit more wild I mean it's it's kind of rare if I'm gonna be using black I still feel like that's a little bit Halloweeny which is fine on Halloween but for this project I'm definitely not going to be going with a really dark color so back down we're deep diving okay so this is my my newest pattern called sugar pop and it is dissected into there's four triangle blocks and I am kind of playing with color so I have cool on one side and then warm on the other you can kind of see that so I'm going to do that very similar thing with my thread I'm gonna play off of that cool and that warm so I've already kind of picked out some of these threads I have kind of this nice light aqua I have another nice light baby blue and then I have kind of this taupe color which I actually don't don't think I'm gonna use I also have this cream I think that creams really nice I usually use a little bit of cream in all of my quilts just because I think it looks really really nice especially on a dark fabric see here's where you're gonna say Suzy are you kind of breaking your roll with a high contrast see I think light thread on dark fabric looks really nice it's just the dark thread on the light fabric I don't know it gets me it's totally a personal preference anyway so you can see with my machine quilting okay if you can tell this is a technique I really like to do hey yeah okay you still with me so what I really like to do is machine quilt in the ditch or maybe just some very very basic stitching here I used kind of an aqua color and and so this entire quilt could be finished I don't need to do more but I am just gonna do a little bit of decorative stitching and it just to give it kind of that homey heirloom quilt quality which you know is wonderful we all love but if I were to fully hand quilt I would have fully hand quilt this quilt it would take me a while you know and I don't know maybe you don't want to spend a while on a baby quilt or on every quilt so if you want the look of hand quilting but you don't want to spend the time try what I do in a lot of cases not always I stitch in the ditch or I stitch right above the ditch and kind of close up let's see here you can see I stitch instead of sitting in the ditch I like my stitches to be seen because I always want people to see my work and I stitch right above the ditch so this whole quilt is already basted because it's already quilted so now I'm just going to add some decorative stitching I think I really like this blue as light blue you know I could I could okay nuts and I could could do something darker but that's just not my style I'm going to keep it light keep it kind of like a really nice accent that you see if you get up close and also you know hand quilting makes quilts feel so yummy I don't know if you've ever cuddled with a hand quilted quilt but it's just fluffy and light and it has a totally different feel to machine quilted clothes and then what you get with this kind of loose stitch in the ditch and then the machine the hand quilting is you get a little bit of both so it's not full fledge cozy comfort a fully hand crawl to quilt but it's pretty close and it's a fraction of the time so just for this demo I'm gonna be doing that and but now I'm gonna dive in so in the next scene I'm going to show you how I thread a needle and how I not a quilters not again you can just double knot your thread that's totally fine but it is really fun to have like a little schnazzy trick you know like oh look how I fancy not my thread so I'm going to show you that in the next scene it's gonna be kind of an odd angle just my hands ready so I picked my thread it's kind of this nice light blue and I'm gonna pick my needle and like I said I kind of go you know somewhere in the middle right that's probably let's see this is nine eight it's probably a seven probably okay so now you can see my needle threader in action you first thread that through the eye of the needle and I recently chipped off a no chip manicure so that's why my nails are looking kind of gross and sometimes I like my thread yep just gonna give that a little lick see and I pull it through look at that so no fuss no squinting none of that okay and now a lot of people think that I do I cut my thread too long well you know I just I don't like to pop my thread a ton of times if I can help it so I actually I usually measure on my quilt how long do I need this to be I'm not gonna do that here but I am just gonna cut it here we go we'll just hope for the best okay so here's that really fancy quilters not you're ready for this so you can see that I have two two sides to this thread but they don't go all the way to the end because I'm just gonna be running this thread with a single single ply I guess you would say so I'm not going to be doubling it up I'm not going to be doing two like an embroidery floss kind of deal just one okay so I take the end so I have to see I have two strands right here I take the long end that's gonna be my knotted end and I hold it - so I'm I'm right-handed okay so this is my left hand so now I have my my needle vertical and then I have this pinched between my thumb and my middle finger just like that and then I'm gonna pinch this behind my needle so I'm holding it just like that with my right hand I go one two three I do a triple knot just because I like it to be secure but a double knot is just fine actually a traditional cultures knot is just a double knot and then I kind of pinched that so I pull it down just like that and I pinch it and now I'm just gonna take it with my left hand and run that little pinchy bit at the end what just happened and that is the magic of the quilters knot so now I have a knot did he so what I'm gonna do now is trim pretty close not totally close not right up on it but pretty close why not now I'm ready to start sewing so one question I get when I do this technique of machine quilting a little bit and then doing some decorative hand quilting one question I get is should I finish it should I trim my quilt and bind my quilts and then and then do all of the the hand quilting and I say no I say don't do that because you're gonna be saving yourself a lot of time a lot of times you know if I have an area like this or you know I won't I won't try to do a running stitch all the way around you can literally just start you can just go in through that just one layer right here and you can start sewing like that you don't have to pop your thread like you would if you're going to be starting where it's it's it's already secured and closed so I say you know save yourself that headache finish a quilt when it is finished but until then keep it unfinished and I think I think it's gonna be a lot easier for you okay now next before actually I start I start quilting I'm going to show you how I like to mark a quilt okay so I don't like to put any actual marks on the top layer of my fabric just on that off chance that it doesn't wash out so I use this thing called a Hera marker the dull side of a butter knife will work just the same this is just a fun notion to buy if you like to just buy quilty things so my strips finished are two inches and I'm just gonna have a running stitch running all the way down the middle so half of 2 is 1 I'm gonna press relatively hard and I'm going to make a crease to see that so I I haven't made any marks on my quilt I've just made a crease and another question I get a lot is well how long do those creases actually hang out on your fabric do they last and I've I've crumpled up these quilts I've thrown these quilts in suitcases I've packed them and they've been on airplanes and we know how tha is with packages and and these creases they stick around I mean it's pretty crazy you know the fabric especially if you you start while you were sewing it has a memory and it remembers when you you know when you mark it it you know if you've ever done some quilting and you hated it and you ripped it out you know you have it kind of remembers those holes it will go away you know if you do some scratching or if you wash it it will definitely go away but your fabric remember is it kind of you know kind of hold a grudge on you a little bit okay so I've just marked you can see that with my harem marker and now I'm gonna show you even though like I said before even though I could just go in through my batting layer and I could just start I'm gonna show you how I pop my knot because if I did need to start here or if I did need to start in the middle of a quilt so that's something you're gonna have to need to know so about a half an inch away from where I want to begin I'm going to skim the surface and I just skim it so that I'm not getting all the way through my third layer because I don't want those knots to show up on the back I want it to be hidden in my batting layer so I just skimmed that surface and I pop out right where I want to start sewing which is right here so I pull it through you know what I'm missing oh my goodness I felt that as I was playing it through no it's missing my thimble okay so obviously I don't want that not all you got to do yep you hear that pop it and I kind of I do a little one of these small scratchy scratch and that'll go away okay so now we're ready to start read a rock and roll that's going to take some practice so don't get annoyed if you pull too hard and it pops from here to here and out again that happens sometimes let's just pretend like that did happen well it's really stuck in there you can see hand quilting another question I get how secure is hand quilting well it is very secure that does not coming out okay but if I did pop this clear out of both holes you know what I would do is I would go through that same hole because it's kind of now it's been stretched out by Minot but then I would just skip a little bit and I would go in just right here maybe because that new hole will be thinner so I'd pull a little bit less scuse me I'd pull a little bit less and then I would you know have you figure it out okay so now we're gonna start we're gonna we're ready to go and I like to do this flat on a table some people use a hoop I also do this kind of draped in my lap that's something you can do as well when you when you drape it off the edge of a table it's actually really nice for that rocking motion I can take my I can take my left hand and I can kind of you know hold it up like this if you use a hoop the reason I don't like to use a hoop is because you can't cover as much ground as quickly you're constantly readjusting your hoop it also really wrinkles up your quilt so if you're doing it flat on a table your stitches are gonna look something like this where you go in and you go out and you go in and you go out and it has this really nice meditative thing where you're just going in and you're going now okay so I've grabbed a handful of stitches now I'm gonna pull it all the way through and I am never ever ever ever poking and pulling it and then poking I'm never doing that because look how even those stitches are on the back they're exactly the same as my stitches on the front and if you're poking all the way through and pulling it and then poking from the bottom you're never going to get those even stitches because you're working blind you can't see what you're doing but here I can always see what I'm doing so I've found that if you do it on a table if you do it for hours and hours sometimes just like this you can scuff up this part of your table some people are worried about that let's save a really nice table well you know what you can do you could just slide your ruler right there and I'm hitting that that plastic ruler it's actually a really nice slick edge so that's pretty nice for me okay I'm going to show you another technique because sometimes when I do that for a really long time my pointer finger actually gets a little bit tender because I'm I'm really working it you can see I'm really working that and then I'm pushing through with my finger so here's here's a different technique I'm gonna flip the camera around so you're actually gonna have to see me again but this this other technique I'm going to show you is going to probably work better for you in the long term if you are working for quite a few hours every day okay and sometimes you have to go a little bit slower make sure it's even and you know I'm telling you right off the bat you might only be able to get one or two stitches at a time and you're gonna think my stitches are not even this is no fun but it just takes some practice that's all it takes I have hand quilted for hundreds of hours I mean I really have hundreds of hours it's kind of crazy okay I mean I flipped that camera to show you the other way to do this hey me again okay so I'm gonna go down and I'm gonna show you how I do this right okay oh and I'm also six months pregnant okay so here we are you're seeing from a different angle so it might not be as easy to watch exactly what I'm doing but hopefully you can kind of get the gist okay so this is the edge of my table you can see right here one thing I really like to do is I'm kind of pulling it so now here's the edge of my table you see that so I like I like to be able to have my my left hand underneath and that way I can really get that rocking motion and this is the reason why some people do like that hoop because the rocking motion is the best way to can quilts what I was showing you on the table it does work and it's nice and I find myself doing that just to change things up but the rocking motion where you're putting all of the pressure on your thimble is how you're going to have longevity with this so I'm tipping it up and then I go back down and I tip it up and I go back down and do you see that my pointer finger is doing no work in has no pressure on it there's no needle pressing on it there's no tension on it so it's totally just my thimble finger okay so now I have some of that I just squeeze it and then I pull it out pull it through so if you're if you're really wanting to learn how to quilt the right way what you're going to have longevity and you know if you have any arthritis or if you have any problems with your fingers this is the best way to do it so that you have no aches or pains the next day you have no weird callus on your pointer finger and this is also very similar to penmanship you know everyone will write a little bit differently hold their pencil a little bit differently and that's totally fine you know it's all about just getting those results that you want okay so we've done some hand quilting that's looking really nice I'm going to show you how to finish and pop that knot I'm gonna flip the camera again so you can see it from my angle so there's really no reason for me to finish right now other than for the demonstration let's say I want to wrap it up this is the end what I do is I make a knot and make a knot about a half inch away from my final stitch or my second to final stitch so here is one you have one little knot and then I'm gonna do it again and you know this is something I don't even know if it makes a ton of sense and it probably doesn't even make a big difference but I would prefer for it to be a square knot than just a regular double knot so you can see that first time and someone might laugh at me because maybe I'm just going the exact same way just using took my hands differently I would go under in this way to do that first knot okay the second one I go under the other way with my other hand because I want it to be a square knot which is more secure than just a regular double knot I don't know guys it's just something I read once and I was like yeah I can just do that okay so you can see let's get right in there that is roughly I will say it's actually more like an inch okay so just pretty close you don't want your not hanging out way out here and I'm gonna show you why you don't want your not hang your way out here because you're gonna get a loose stitch if you do that okay so this is where my next stitch would be so I'm going to go in here and I'm just going to get that top layer okay I'm not diving into my batting I'm not diving it into the backing I'm just gonna get that top layer and I'm gonna come out right about here because I'm gonna hide this not gonna pull it through and I need to pop it once again there we go okay let me tell you some things that I've done wrong I've done a lot of things wrong one thing I've done wrong is I have created a knot you can kind of see my knot is under the fabric right here I create a knot and then I didn't pull my needle through far enough so the knot popped out right here and it was like I had to back in and then I had to kind of loosen my threads and I had to fiddle with it so make sure that when you're you're doing that final stitch right here and you're going in that you're really grabbing quite a bit of fabric and pulling your needle out relatively far away so you don't make that mistake of popping you're not all the way through back to the top okay so why did we make that knot relatively close only about an inch long from your final stitch we'll look at this so if I take my needle if you're not was really far away you could just keep going and pulling that up and these stitches could get kind of loose but what I do what I like to do is after I have my knot in there you can still kind of see that bump I really kind of push it in and scratch it in so it gets locked into the batting because if you're not get some knotted into the batting it's definitely not going to be getting loose up here and it gets more secure you know all those fibers just get kind of knotted up so the last thing to do look at that and now you can pop your knot and start again print it's fun I hope you enjoyed that tutorial I'm trying really hard to look into this side part side part of my phone if you have any questions you can ask me in the comments I'm going to link to all of my supplies I'm going to link to blog posts on basting a quilt simple quilt patterns let me think batting if you have any questions about batting a link to that so check out the comments on the this YouTube video but also make sure you check out the comments on the blog post because I'm going to embed this video in a blog post with all of the information we just talked about do you scrappy hey buddy

Channel: Suzy Quilts

Views: 408,156

Rating: 4.8318439 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, quilting, hand quilting, sewing tutorial, how to hand quilt, how to hand sew, hand quilting supplies

Id: IdmnMhcA6dI

Length: 32min 16sec (1936 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 28 2018