Hand Quilting through Fused Fabrics

A quote from my darlink Gabrielle's blog this morning:

My head is so full of ideas that I can't work fast enough to get them out. Yes, Mel dahling, I know if I fused they would all be done in a week.....but I don't even own a sliver of Wonder Under. Plus there is that pesky hand quilting part which I keep hanging on to like a dog with a bone.

Like the Divas that we are, we must communicate in a world wide forum.

ha! I say HA! to you m'dear Fabu Gabrielle. I oft times find meself in need of a bit o'handwork. Whilst tis true that the fused fabric has a tad more stability than the unfused surface, I find this works in my favor. I prefer to use threads that show and stitches that are visible, which accounts for the fact that no one ever asks me to teach a hand quilting class, but be that as it may, I still call this hand quilting. Or sometimes embroidery. Well...reckless embroidery, at least.

I destest that thing called a hoop and the fabric fused to the batting eliminates that need. And of course I am not considering my quilting to be solely the only quilting. It falls more into the decorative category, with the machine doing the real work. But I have gathered some examples here to dispute the concept that one cannot hand quilt through fused fabric.

As we all know I don't do anything that smacks of being hard, and I never would advocate anyone else to do such a thing if it were secretly difficult. Do give it a try. It couldn't hurt.

O...I forgot to add. The stitches only go through the top and the batting. After that is accomplished I add the backing fabric, thus hiding all the hand stitching and knots.

Mostly hand quilted, with a tad of machine work to finish it off.



detail

Both hand and machine used in concert

machine embroidery with hand embroidery on the background fabric


All hand quilted with machine stitching on the binding.