I thought quilting the Frozen quilts would be fast and easy. I planned on outline quilting the panel motifs with clear thread and free motion quilting. The borders would be simple straight-line quilting with a walking foot - all as suggested in the pattern.
I recently re-watched Beyond Basic Machine Quilting, the excellent Craftsy class with the wonderful Ann Petersen, and I thought I would try her recommendation to stitch-in-the-ditch around all the border seams first, working from the OUTSIDE to the INSIDE (as opposed to working from the centre out as most quilting instructors teach). While this method does result in straight borders it also resulted in big puckers, billowing, and pleats since the bulk of the fabric had 'no where to go' because of the stitching along the border edges. I am really frustrated with the quilting now but as I am using monofilament thread and I have done too much quilting already, I can't remove the stitches to release the puckering.
I did a lot of testing with the monofilament thread before I began. I have a couple of brands (e.g. Superior, YLI) in both clear and smoke (for light and dark fabrics). I wanted to use it in the needle and have polyester thread in the bobbin, which matches the backing fabric. I was able to get good tension and the test pieces looked pretty even. Mono thread can be fussy and difficult to work with sometimes and I'm fortunate that my machine (the Horizon 7700) plays nicely with it. I used the even-feed foot (i.e. walking foot) to stitch in the ditch and add channel quilting in the borders. Ignoring t the puckers, the stitching looks even and fairly invisible, other than the slight sheen to the mono thread. It's not my favourite look but I felt I didn't have much choice to avoid pokies from the light coloured bobbin thread and also for quilting in the panel - I didn't want to have the stitching show on the girls and/or continuously swap out thread colours.
Once I began free-motion quilting in the panel with the same threads I remembered that it is so difficult to do so with mono thread. I couldn't get the tension adjusted - I even tried the new blue bobbin case - and if I stitched very slowly (needed to get larger stitches), the blue bobbin thread came to the top. Travel stitching is a mess with mono thread and trying to avoid it is very difficult as well. After outlining one side of Anna I gave up and switched back to the even-feed foot. Trying to move the quilt around to stitch any curves in the panel was a big pain and this approach was just as frustrating! I decided to leave this part of the quilting and stitch between the blocks instead. Once that was done I switched to white cotton thread to do the free-motion work in the panel - quilting along the snowy background in random lines. I knew I would have to use cotton thread to outline the snowflakes anyway so I might as well use it for the interior of the panel as well.
Now I have mono thread on one side and white thread on the other. This first quilt is a bit of a mess but I'm learning what works and what doesn't for the second quilt. I'm sure once it is bound and washed the problem areas won't show up as much but I'm still dismayed at the results so far. I have to take a break anyway as my DD is having friends overnight and I need to totally dismantle my sewing room (tables, frame, machines cleared out, etc.). I suppose I need to be in the kitchen doing my (very late) holiday baking so being forced away from quilting is probably the only way it will happen!
I do what Ann did - anchor the quilt by stitching large stitches around the edge first. I then start from the center to do the rest of the quilting. It keeps my quilt nice and straight and so far, I have not run into puckering issues. Done this way, you can take out the stitching on the outside if you have any puckering by time you get there and just smooth it out a bit. Just a thought.
Also, want to say Happy Holidays to you and your family. And, thank you for being a wonderful inspiration to all of us in touch with your blog and you.
Posted by: Karen | December 16, 2014 at 01:04 PM