Family Quilts > amy a la mode

Quilting Purists — Hand vs. Machine Quilting

Posted by Amy on August 24th, 2010

Thanks so much to everyone who offered their thoughts last week on hand quilting versus machine quilting. If you haven’t read the comments, I highly recommend that you take a look.

Hand quilting on my Ducks in a Row quilt.

I loved Melinda’s observation that “it isn’t a quilt until it is quilted,” and PioneerValleyGirl’s comment, “I don’t see how the handpiecing can be wasted, except perhaps by languishing unfinished.” This makes a lot of sense to me! If attempting to hand quilt this means that I might not ever get it done, then machine quilting it probably IS the better choice!

I was just telling some students in my quilting class yesterday that they shouldn’t worry too much about the “rules” — as far as I’m concerned if it’s their quilt they should do what they want. I should take my own advice!

I love that you focused on the importance of this being a joint project between me and my dad. That’s what I’m so excited about too!

Machine quilting on my Zen Quilt.

When my dad finishes the quilt and sends it to me, I’ll have a look at it and decide then what I’m going to do. I’m going to let the design make the decision for me. As Michelle put it, “there are just some things that are done better with machine quilting.” And there are some things that are done better with hand quilting. I will choose a design that complements the piecing. If that requires machine quilting, then it will be machine quilted. If it requires hand quilting, then it will be hand quilted.

I’ll sum up the entire discussion with this quote from Bobbie23nc who said, “I say it’s the love in the stitches that really matters.”

Amen, Bobbie, amen.

Quilting Options — Are You a Purist?

Posted by Amy on August 19th, 2010

I was talking with my father the other day and asked him how his new quilt project is going. He’s busy hand piecing the top, which he says will work out to be about 78 x 88 if all goes according to plan. When he gets it done, he’s planning on sending it to me so that I can quilt it for him.

Detail of my Dad’s Long Diamonds Quilt.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at our Family Quilts. While the piecing methods varied from all hand piecing to a combination of hand and machine piecing (I don’t think any were done completely by machine), all of the quilts were quilted by hand.

Detail of hand quilting from the my Great Grandmother’s Orange Double Wedding Ring Quilt.

Some people are quilting purists. If a quilt is pieced by hand, the purists believe you are “ruining” it if you quilt it by machine. All that time spent hand piecing, wasted! Purists feel that if you hand piece, you MUST hand quilt.

So, my issue is this, if my father goes to all the trouble to hand piece a quilt, am I “ruining” it if I machine quilt it? That’s what he intends for me to do with it and he doesn’t see any problem with machine quilting it. The purist lurking in the back of my brain may not let me do that, but hand quilting 78 x 88 inches? Wow. That’s way more hand quilting than I’ve ever even considered doing for one project. My biggest hand-quilting project was 42 x 42 inches and it took me an estimated 45-50 hours to complete.

Detail of quilting on my Stacked Coins Quilt.

By the way, I think it’s totally awesome to split a quilt project like this with my dad, even though we live 2500 miles apart! Which is why I want to do the quilting myself, whichever way I decide is the way to go.

What do you think? Are you a purist and believe it should be hand quilted? Or do you think it’s okay to just go with my father’s request and machine quilt it?

Giveaway Winner!

Posted by Amy on May 21st, 2010

Wow! 296 comments! And some of you *really* like the giveaway quilt! I’m happy to tell you that this quilt will be available from my new business soon, so stay tuned.

Before I get to the winner, I wanted to clarify that the quilts listed on the Family Quilts page were not made by me, they were made by other members of my family — my father, my mother’s mother, and my father’s grandmother. The quilts on the My Quilts page were made by me. But thanks to those of you who voted for one of my quilts as your favorite. I’m totally honored, since my great grandmother is some stiff competition!

For fun, I tallied up the votes on the family quilts. The winner, with 33 votes, was the LeMoyne Star, which was a wedding gift to my husband and me from my grandmother

Following close behind was the white double wedding ring with 30 votes. Quite a few people didn’t specify which double wedding ring they liked best, so if you pool the three double wedding quilts and the unspecified double wedding ring votes, it was a total of 65 votes!

The hearts and gizzards came in next with 26 votes. This one was my father’s baby quilt, made by my great grandmother.

I’m also pleased to say that my dad’s hexagon quilts made an impressive showing, with 18 and 13 votes!

Thanks for voting!

Now, on to the winner!

The random number generator selected number 91.

Congratulations, Jen!

Thanks to everyone for participating!

Family Quilts — Diamonds Squared with Pieced Border

Posted by Amy on April 2nd, 2010

It’s Family Quilt time again! Yippee!!

This, like the last quilt, is another of sketchy origin. It has been at my parents house as long as I can remember. Interestingly, this quilt is VERY similar to the previous Diamonds Squared quilt that I posted about. Here’s that one again, just to jog your memory:

The previous quilt was likely by my Great Grandma Roloff (my dad’s grandmother), so maybe this one is too?

I realized this morning that this pattern is very much like a double Irish chain, except that it’s turned so that it’s no longer on the diagonal. This gives a totally different effect! The different placements of the light and dark fabrics within each block produce very different effects as well.

One of my favorite favorite things about this quilt is the pieced border. So many little scraps of fabric sewn together. So many great little prints in there! Click on the individual photos to go to Flickr where you can see really big versions of these images and the details of all these little prints.

The back of this quilt is muslin, but the binding is pieced scraps like the border. Unfortunately, the binding appears to be worn off in some places. Again, you can really see the pieced binding in the larger images on Flickr.

I actually forgot to look at this to see if it was hand pieced, but it was definitely hand quilted. The quilting is a really simple pattern of diagonal lines. Each square has two diagonal lines that runs through it. All the lines run in the same direction — in other words, it just makes lines, not diamonds.

I love looking at this quilt. There are so many places where there is a slight deviation from the pattern, with one darker square thrown in, or suddenly something pink, that it never bores me!

Well, this has caught me up again. I hope you have enjoyed these additions to my Family Quilts series! Hopefully, a tutorial will be coming up next!

Family Quilts — Spider Web

Posted by Amy on April 1st, 2010

Thanks for the well wishes — I’m feeling much better!

Welcome to another family quilts post!

This is an interesting quilt, though I unfortunately don’t have much information about it. It’s been around my parents’ house as long as I can remember. It was just an “old quilt.” I honestly don’t know who made it, but I’m certain someone in our family did (probably on my mother’s side, as we don’t seem to have come into possession of many on my father’s side until after his mother’s death, which was in 1997).

At any rate, here it is!

I spent some time digging through my block pattern books today and was unable to find a name for this pattern, so if anyone out there knows, I’d love to hear it! For lack of a better name, I’m calling it “Spider Web”, though I came across at least five other patterns of that name in my digging.

This quilt uses only three different fabrics, plus muslin. Solid orange and yellow fabrics are combined to form the spider web or star pattern, and then a small black (or maybe blue?) and white print is used to make the crosses in the centers.

I think that little print looks like it might have been someone’s pajamas.

I love the curves at the ends of the webs. They really boost the interest of this pattern up a notch. This quilt looks to be both hand pieced and hand quilted. This is a close-up of the quilting along the border. Cute, eh?

The quilting for the main part of the quilt is a standard 1/4″ inside all the seams. Very traditional for hand quilting. And here’s the muslin backing.

This quilt actually looks like it has a knife-edge binding, where the top and bottom of the fabric are turned under on the edges and stitched together. In this case, it seems to have been done by machine. I’m wondering if that was done later to reinforce some earlier hand stitching? I’ll have to look more closely at it next time to see!

I have one more family quilts post for you. I have also recently finished a cushy little laptop sleeve for my sister and I’m planning to do a tutorial on that for you as well! See you soon!