Quiltification

Everywhere I look I see a quilt. Floor tiles in a new restaurant, the pattern of dirty clothes on the floor in my daughter’s room, an artful arrangement of flowers in a vase, light coming in through the lace curtains in my livingroom, edges of cereal boxes lined up in a display at the grocer, a stack of construction timbers waiting in line at a jobsite, pretty little poufs of flowers in a park, and the irony of this one really got to me, the colorful spines of my quilting books. When I walk past the right sort of visual stimulus something just goes, “whirrr, click!” in my brain and it becomes another quilting idea. I often blurt out to whoever I am with, “What a great quilt that would make!” This is great if I’m with a fellow quilter, but only serves to reinforce my eccentric reputation if I’m with other friends or family.

Sometimes these ideas fade before I can get to a notepad or camera, sometimes they stay with me long enough to be incorporated into an actual quilt. Once in a while I’ll get the idea down on paper, buy a bit of fabric and set it aside, coming back to it in a few years when I have an empty spot in the quilting queue, only to find that the idea makes no sense to me or now seems trite or boring.

Whatever the actual results, I relish each sighting because it stretches my quilt designing muscles, keeping my mind’s eye open to the world around me and helping me internalize the beauty to be enjoyed in everything I see.

High or low loft? Cotton, wool, or polyester? How in the world do you decide what to put in the middle of a quilt? I have used several things for quilt batting over the years, and here's what I've learned.

Read and follow manufacturer's recommendations for distance between quilting lines. They aren't kidding around. While the quilt is brand new it will seem that it can endure a much wider spacing of quilting lines, but after just a few short seasons of use you'll begin to notice seperation areas in the batting (thin spots) in the places where stitching is far apart.

High loft equals high anxiety if you plan to do a lot of machine quilting. Smushing the sandwich down tight enough to get the darned thing under your presser foot will wear you out before you even get started.

Two layers of batting of any kind is overkill.

Polyester dulls needles faster than cotton does.

Polyester dries much faster than cotton.

Cotton breathes better than polyester.

Cotton batted quilts form permanent creases when folded much faster than polyester batted quilts do.

Low loft batting, no matter how many layers you use, will never make a puffy comforter style quilt.

High loft batting, no matter how closely you quilt it, will never make a flat quilt.

Wool sure can smell funny in a lasting, permanent, and not at all humorous way if it lives in a humid area for any length of time.

White or pale batting in a black or navy quilt is a serious mistake if much quilting will be done. Better is to buy black, or dye the batting before sandwiching the quilt. If you use white or natural, the quilt ends up looking like it is covered in pet hair when the quilting is over; and if you compulsively pick threads off things, you'll end up losing most of the batting.

Simple cotton flannel works very well as batting if you want a light weight blanket instead of a winter quilt. Use it just like a low loft batting, one layer only, and quilt as usual. You can get away with as much as 6 or 8 inches between quilting lines, and you'll find the sandwich just about flies under the needle. It doesn't get cold around here in the winter time, so I often use flannel to batt baby quilts when the baby will be born in the summertime.

Polyester batting doesn't shrink in the wash. Most all cotton battings do (at least a little bit) and any wool will.

Cotton fabric, cotton thread, cotton batting, and lots of quilting makes an heirloom.

Cotton/poly blend fabrics, polyester batting and cotton/poly threads with any amount of quilting that meets the manufacturer's specificied minimum makes a serviceable, durable quilt that will last several years.

Cotton fabric and cotton batting makes a sandwich that sharp needles will sail through. Your quilting will be a breeze, a pleasure, therapy.

Man-made fiber fabrics and polyester batting will make a sandwich that you will need a post hole digger to bust through. Count on changing needles and fiddling with your bobbin thread all the way through your quilt. Alternatively consider tying the quilt instead of quilting it.

All of these tips pertain to bed quilts. Art quilts are a whole other ball game where many of these tips just don't mean anything. For instance, you seldom need to throw an art quilt into the washing machine, so you'll probably never run across a problem with shrinkage or seperation.

No matter what kind of batting you choose for your quilt, remember to press your top from the back so you can see what happens to all those seam allowances - do your best to keep them as flat as you can. Press the backing fabric, too. Sandwich your quilt in a clean, flat space. Take your time, pin or baste it thoroughly. These things will help keep your sandwich smooth and easy to handle as you quilt.

One of my favorite phases in the quilting process is deciding what kind of pattern or patterns I'll use for the actual quilting stitches. There are some tops that just scream out their quilting needs, but there are others that pretty much present themselves as an empty canvas, begging for something new, creative, special. I sit and look at such a top for quite some while during the decision making process. Sometimes I'll sketch out an idea on a piece of copier paper and pin it to the quilt to help me visualize how it would look repeated or enlarged over the quilt or whatever the plan would be. With few exceptions, once I've found the right pattern it just clicks. It becomes abundantly clear that no other pattern will do; that in fact, no other quilting patterns exist in the universe except the one I plan to use. It just feels right. I roll/fold/wad up my quilt, shove it under the machine, and start quilting. The quilt gets yanked around and around in circles, pushed back and forth, and generally made dizzy as I sew. This is all fine until I hit the saturation point. Sometimes this doesn't happen at all, for instance, on small quilts. Sometimes it happens right after I've finished quilting the first motif. Once I've hit saturation, I lose all interest in the quilt because the rest is just brute force application of the plan I have already begun to implement. You can always tell when this kind of battle is being fought in my sewing room because the rest of the house is clean; that is, spotless. The garage is organized, the leaves are raked, the dog is brushed, the fish are swimming in neat rows in the tank. This is all because I sit down to quilt and think, "No wait. I better go put the clothes in the dryer before they wrinkle." While I'm in the laundry room I'm reminded that the kitchen light switch is grimy with fingerprints, so I wash it. While I have the spray cleaner in hand wiping down the microwave is a breeze. Just one round of this kind of avoidance technique is easily enough for cleaning the living room, almost enough for cleaning a child's room. When I finally force myself to sit back down to quilt my reading glasses will be forgotten in another room, or I'll have a hangnail, or one of my neighbor's children's friend's pet will have a hangnail or I get another web log entry finished.

Applique isn't hard, it's tedious. You just have to be prepared to take a Very Long Time to finish whatever project you set out to do. If you simply adopt the attitude that your only goal is to make This Stitch a Perfect Stitch, clearing your mind of any stitch that precedes or follows it, you'll achieve wonderful results. Don't let yourself keep working if you are tired. Don't applique if what you need is to feel a sense of accomplishment, immediate gratification, or any other such american-style self-pat-on-the-back feelings. Don't applique while cooking or listening to the poem your third-grader is memorizing. In those directions lies madness and failure.

Applique is a delightful way to focus your meditative skills. When you feel the rest of the world slip away from you and all you can see is the tiny space between the stitch you just made and the needle poking up through the fabric two threads from the edge of your applique seam allowance, you reach an enlightenment that freezes time, enhances your sense of smell, makes you younger, thinner and richer. Well, it is at least mildly pleasant.