Six useful products or techniques I used to quilt my vintage quilt

 

I have just had a blast quilting my vintage quilt top! These six things made the quilting process so much easier. You may not need these items for every quilt, but for this quilt, each one was helpful. It’s taking a LOT longer to finish this quilt than anticipated. Here we go:

Basting with water soluble thread

This was a vintage top and there were some challenges with wonky seams and such. It did not lay flat. I was committed to honoring the maker by not remaking it into a quilt that met modern technical standards. So I had to figure out a way to handle all that extra puff.

I loaded up my machine top and bobbin with water soluble thread and free motion quilted those lines. Yes, there is such a thing as water soluble thread and your local quilt shop probably has some. I quilted 5 lines of water soluble basting on each border to nail down that puff.

Feathers have a LOT of quilting on the bias. Add the puff of wool batting and wonky from the top’s construction, and it was easy to quilt in tucks. The water soluble thread nailed everything in place until it was quilted. It is super easy to unpick since it is such a weak thread.

Use the best foot

This is my opinion on feet and I am showing BERNINA feet because that is what I use and love. You may find success with some of the feet that are not my favs – it’s always your choice as to what works best for your quilts.

This is my fav (#15) for most free motion quilting by far, a foot unique to BERNINA. It gives fabulous visibility and does a fabulous job of controlling the quilt. Love it!

My next fav (#24) – can you get any more visibility than that?

When quilting over things that have a ridge, heavily embroidered areas, anything with dimension, you need a cupped foot like this (#44C) to glide over those ridges. I love this BERNINA foot because it does not have any red concentric markings to obliterate my view. Still, a cupped foot does distort my view a bit, see the red arrow. Seeing things that are right at the edge of the opening can be tricky on any cupped foot.

I see quilters posting videos of regular free motion quilting using a ruler foot (this is BERNINA #72). Why? Only if you are going back and forth between ruler work and regular free motion quilting does this make sense. I see no gain from using a ruler foot for normal free motion quilting; look at how much visibility is lost with a ruler foot.

And don’t get me started on cheap generic ruler feet, they are not worth it! There is no marking at the center of the foot, you need that. And the needle itself is not even centered in the foot. Generics are poorly made; buy the foot for your specific machine.

I prefer other feet to this one (#29) for most free motion quilting. The lip of the plastic is high enough that it’s hard to see your needle actually penetrate the fabric. And on dark fabric and/or thread, it is hard to see behind the foot through the plastic.

And BERNINA folks have the choice of using the BERNINA Stitch Length Regulator foot which yields perfectly even stitch length no matter how slow or fast you quilt. It’s pretty cool! I don’t use it because it came out years after I began to quilt and my stitch length is pretty even on its own, snort!

BTW, note the oddly placed seam at the red arrow. There were lots of these in this vintage top. I think the maker might have almost run out of fabric.

The right foot makes a huge difference!

Blue wash out marker

I marked the dickens out of this quilt, I had to. All grids are marked, you can’t slide on that one. And every single block had a grid. Plus I had to mark my spines, the center and edges of each border, etc. I don’t like to mark, but sometimes it’s necessary. If I mark, I use a blue wash out marker almost exclusively. BTW, I’m the one that wrote the post about the issues with Frixxion pens.

My pen of choice. I did use the Crayola wash out on one block and it took a LOT more work to rinse that out than this pen, so I’m sticking with this one.

The Wave Edge Ruler

Unfortunately, they no longer make this ruler:

I used it to mark my spines. Yes, there are other wavy rulers, all with waves too dramatic for marking spines. This has a 3/8″ or so dip from the highest to the lowest part of the wave and that is what I want.

Having a ruler like this makes marking spines easy and fast: I slap it down at each corner and mark maybe 2/3 of the spine, then fudge the middle to make things even. Easy peasy, I like that.

Triple stitch

Yes, your machine has a triple stitch and it looks something like this in your stitch selection:

I love that big beefy look. I put two rows of triple stitch around each block. I am surprised at how many sewers are not aware of this stitch, it’s so pretty!

Presser foot pressure

There was a lot of puff from the wool batting and I lightened the presser foot pressure to reduce the chances of getting a tuck on all that puff. If you are quilting something with low loft, you may need to increase the presser foot pressure. It’s a menu-driven option on fully computerized machines but your machine might have a dial on the side:

Most full sized machines can regulate presser foot pressure; many “class sized” light weight machines do not have this feature. It’s so handy!

Sure hope to finish this quilt soon!

I’ll be linking up with:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday