A Week of Quilting Simply Woven

Hello Friends and Welcome!

After the progress I made on Simply Woven leading up to last week's project update, I've been really inspired to continue working on it again this week!

Having just completed the broken border motif, that meant jumping into the wavy line background quilting! The organic nature of the background design should make it easier to quilt since I won't need to worry about precisely matching the quilted lines to those of the piecing. However, the broken border motif was much closer to the edges of the quilt, so I wasn't attempting to move quite so much fabric through my machine all at once.

I've also become much more interested in hand quilting since I first started quilting Simply Woven, so I've been really inspired to incorporate some into the background! I've never hand quilted anything much larger than 12" square, so this 80" square quilt will be a great learning opportunity in that respect, but this decision may also dramatically increase the time needed to finish the quilt.

To get started on it, I challenged myself to work on Simply Woven every day of this past week! I dedicated an hour or two to planning, marking, or quilting each day and watched that work slowly add up over the course of the week!

And here's how it went:

Monday

To begin, I needed to update my quilting plan.

The original plan that I drafted last spring was primarily focused on the broken border with only a vague idea of how the background would be quilted. That idea was to quilt wavy lines running from the top right corner to the bottom left; a very simple plan inspired by the wood grain patterns in the Oakwood fabric that was used to piece the quilt. You can see that plan below:

I wanted to stick closely to this original design, but also to incorporate some extra visual interest.

The first component I added were some decorative knots. The original idea of the wavy background lines was that they would look like wood grain, so I thought knots would pair well with that concept!

The way I planned for them to work was to quilt a set of parallel lines that would widen to create a large open space between them where the knot would go, then narrow back towards each other to close the knot. Here is a sample of how that could work:

However, I didn't want a bunch of big areas without any quilting, so I began thinking of fill patterns for those. Rather than filling them with concentric rings like they would have on actual wood grain, I thought it would be an interesting textural change to try to recreate some of the other printed designs from the fabric of the quilt!

A few examples are pebbles, leaves and foliage, zebra stripes, and shelf mushrooms. Each of these features organic shapes and lines which should be a lot of fun to recreate!

Since these designs are likely to be a little more complex and I expect it would be difficult to get them through the machine, these sections will be quilted by hand.

I'm also planning to quilt some of the long, wavy lines by hand too. This should help to make the hand quilted knot motifs feel more cohesive with the rest of the design. I'm thinking roughly a quarter of the wavy background lines should be done by hand, so every 3 to 5 of those lines will be quilted by hand.

I'm quite happy with this newly defined plan and can't wait to start quilting it out on fabric!

Tuesday

Tuesday was the day I began actual progress on the quilt itself!

With my new idea planned out, I decided to start by marking one set of wavy lines, along which I would create a few knots. I thought a large knot towards the top and a smaller one towards the bottom would create an interesting look.

I drew a guideline onto the quilt in chalk, eyeballing where it should curve and the placement of the knots. The quilting for the background is supposed to feel organic, so I wasn't too worried about making the marked line perfect.

With a guideline in place, I began my first set of wavy background lines! I quilted mostly along the marked lines, but embraced the organic nature of the design by allowing myself to wander off it if doing so felt right.

I finished my progress for the day by burying the ends of my thread in the quilt, leaving me with some clean and finished-feeling linework!

Wednesday

On Wednesday, I had a virtual meeting to attend, so I decided to try working on my quilting at that time.

The machine would have been too disruptive and taken too much of my focus off the meeting, so I decided to try some hand quilting instead!

I wanted to start off my hand quilting with something simple, so rather than filling one of the knots I had made on Tuesday, I instead focused on echoing the long line of quilting. However, I ran into two concerns after only a few inches of quilting.

The first problem I had was supporting the weight of a large quilt while quilting while in a meeting. If I wasn't in a meeting, I might have had a little more freedom about how and where to sit, allowing me to arrange the quilt around myself in a more manageable way. Alternatively, I could have used a frame to support the quilt.

I do have a small, free standing quilt frame that I can use for this, and I believe that my Mom has a large quilting hoop that I might be able to borrow for lap quilting. Either way, I think having a support would help immensely with my hand quilting!

Given that I was in a meeting at the time, I didn't have the time to go set up my quilting frame to test this theory, but I will certainly be keeping it in mind for my next bout of hand quilting!

My second issue was the more concerning one. My hand quilted stitches felt quite invisible compared to the machine quilting, giving them much less impact in the context of the large and busy quilt.

I think there's a couple reasons for this, one being that my stitches are just way too small, and the other is that my thread is too fine.

Stitch length is more of a technical issue, so the only way to solve that will be with practice. But thread weight can be much more easily solved by purchasing a new spool of thread. I've noticed that many hand quilters use 12 weight thread as opposed to the 50 weight thread that's common for machine quilting.

Knowing I wanted to buy some new thread anyway, I decided to end my progress here for the day.

I was a little discouraged that this first attempt at hand quilting on Simply Woven resulted in something I wasn't happy with, but I've left that stitching in place. I see no reason to reverse my progress since I doubt this section will be noticeable on the finished project. I can always take it out later if it happens to still be bothering me.

Thursday

After my unsatisfactory hand quilting the day before, I was excited to get back to the machine on Thursday!

I decided to quilt another set of lines with knots following the same procedure from Tuesday; mark the lines with chalk then quilt along them. I ended up using a similar knot placement to Tuesday as well; a larger one near the top with a smaller one towards the bottom.

After quilting those, I was still feeling ambitious and decided to add a machine quilted echo line to one side of the marked pair.

Unlike the first set of lines, which I marked with chalk, the echo lines don't need to be marked in advance. Instead, I can use the shape of a previously quilted line as a guide. But since this quilting is supposed to look organic, I intentionally added some variation, making the echo line follow very closely in some places and further away in others.

I finished my quilting session by tying off and burying my threads.

Friday

On Friday, I wanted to add another set of knots to the quilt.

Rather than jumping right into marking a set of lines, this time I stepped back and looked at the positioning of the existing quilting. It felt like there was a lot of space in between my first two sets of knotted lines, so I decided that was where today's quilting would go!

To help balance the two larger knots I'd already quilted towards the top of the quilt, I chose to place my newest knot near the bottom of the quilt. With this decided, I followed the same set of steps as before; marking the lines then quilting over them without worrying too much about remaining exactly where I'd marked.

Once again, I tied off and buried my threads to finish of quilting for the day!

Saturday

On Saturday, I realized I hadn't yet taken any steps towards buying a new spool of thread for my hand quilting, so I did a little research.

My local store usually only carries 40 and 50 weight thread. I've never seen the thicker 12 weight on their shelves. Instead, I looked at the website of a store near my Mom, which did offer 12 weight thread, but must be low on stock since they only had three colours available, none in brown.

Unfortunately, by the time I'd figured this out, they were already closed for the weekend. I'll have to reach out on Tuesday to see if they're expecting more soon!

With my thread research at a standstill, I returned to quilting! I decided the knotted lines I had already quilted could use a little more accenting, so I focused my efforts on echo quilting.

After two such lines, my bobbin ran out and I decided to finish with quilting for the day.

Sunday

Sunday brought an end to the week, and a final day to make some good quilting progress!

I began by tying off the thread ends I hadn't buried on Saturday before jumping into more echo quilting! Some areas were given a single echo line, and others received two. I don't know if I will do to as many as three since I am still planning to fill the spaces between with some wider spaced lines.

After I was happy with the positioning and quantity of my echo lines, I did a final pass of burying threads and my week of progress was complete!

Moving forward

I'm really interested to see how this design will continue to come together. I think it's such an interesting idea for a quilting pattern!

However, I did run into a few setbacks that will prevent me from continuing to progress into next week.

The first of course was that I'd like some thicker thread. I haven't had the chance to order any just yet, and once I do, I'm sure it will take some time to get to me. I may also want to experiment with a few different needle sizes to see if that helps to regulate the length of my stitches. But of course, I can't test that until my thread arrives.

The other issue is that this quilt seems to have exhausted my machine a little. Something hasn't seemed quite right with the tension since the beginning of the weekend. I did everything I know of to adjust it and restore some balance, but nothing seems to have worked.

I've contacted a local sewing machine technician to take a look at it. I'll be dropping it off tomorrow, but I expect I won't be getting it back for at least a week.

Although I'm sad progress will be slowing down, I do know that having the proper tools and in good working order will produce the best results on my finished quilt, so I don't mind taking a little time off from Simply Woven to ensure that happens.

Until I can get my machine back, I do have a few other winter goals and projects that I'd like to work on! Some, like Simply Woven, will require my machine, but I do have a few that can certainly be done by hand. Check back with me next week to see which of those I end up pursuing, or visit me on Instagram for a sneak peak!

In the meantime, I'm really proud to have sharing all the quilting I completed on Simply Woven this week! It was a lot of fun to dedicate time specifically to one project and I felt like I really got a lot done! And I wish each and every one of you the same satisfaction with your own projects!

Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

VA