Hello dye and sew alongers! Welcome to week 3 of our Marigold Quilt dye and sew along. We’re getting close to finishing our quilts and this will be the last post in this series. Thanks to all who’ve joined! In this week’s post we’ll focus mainly on hand quilting your quilt tops.
Quilt Sandwich
The first step in the hand quilting process is to join the three layers—the quilt back, the batting, and the quilt top—together by making a quilt sandwich. Use masking tape or painters tape to tape your quilt back to a hard surface such as a floor or a table, stretching it taut but not overly taut. Now place your quilt batting on top of the backing and use your hands to smooth out all the wrinkles. Place your quilt top (right side facing up) on top of the batting and smooth all the wrinkles out again. If you’ve already decided on how you will be quilting your quilt this is the time to mark hand quilting guide lines if you need them. You can refer to my free Nine Patch Quilt Tutorial blog post where I share some of my favorite marking tools and how to use them.
After your guide lines have been marked (if you are marking lines) use safety pins to pin the three layers together. Space the pins roughly 6” apart.
Hand Quilt
There are so many options as far as hand quilting styles go! For this project I decided to use a thinner traditional cotton hand quilting thread and I quilted a grid mirroring the gingham. I quilted close to the seams and did not mark guide lines. Another option would be to use a thicker thread such as sashiko or pearl cotton and make bigger stitches, or you could hand tie it. You could do an all over freehand pattern or you could mark guide lines and make straight horizontal or vertical lines or even curves. If you have my book Farm & Folk Quilt Alchemy you can check out the Tiny Quilts project on page 123 if you need some hand quilting ideas and inspiration. If you’re hand quilting for the first time and need help check out the Hand Quilting and Hand Tying tutorials beginning on page 165 of my book. I also have a free hand quilting tutorial saved to my Instagram story highlight titled “🪡 TUTORIAL” where you can see hand quilting in action. In that video I share my favorite hand quilting supplies as well so I recommend checking it out.
left: my marigold quilt up close | right: the back of my marigold quilt
Binding
Once you finish hand quilting your quilt the final step is to bind it. To do this you will use the binding tape included in your kit. I have a free quilt binding tutorial on my blog with very detailed process photos if you need help with binding. There’s also a Quilt Binding tutorial in my book on page 168 that ends (steps 10-12) a little bit differently than the one on the blog.
Thank you so much for following along on this Marigold Quilt Dye and Sew along adventure!! I hope you enjoyed the process of making a quilt from scratch!
Your Beautiful Work!
Thank you to all who have sent me photos of your work to share! Please tag me on Instagram with any progress photos you want to share and I’ll repost them to my stories there. If you have any questions please ask them in the comment section below. Until next time friends!
