Hello all -

We're working on the Christmas quilts for the nieces and nephews and I have a question on the quilting. I'd like to personalize them some more by writing/quilting a message in the border. Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? I was thinking I'd stitch in or near the ditch on the inside and outside, then put the message, and fill in the rest with shapes that are appropriate to the quilt. The message would be something like "Made with love for xxx by Aunt Kim and Uncle Darren --Christmas 2009." I haven't seen anything positive or negative on an idea like this. Will this work? Does anyone know of any pitfalls that I should avoid or have suggestions to make it work well?

Thanks,

Darren

Darren: are you hand or machine quilting? I made a quilt for my grandson that had moons & stars & planets. In the border I handquilted the names of the planets and the "sign" (whatever that symbol is called) for each planet all the way around. It worked fine. I'm not sure about machine quilting but someone here will be able to help you with that. Good luck with your project.

i've tried to quilt my name in a quilt using a regular machine in a quilting frame and it was hard to move in and out of letters without it looking like a crazy mess! Now if u had a long arm it would be easier! Or if u hand stiched it, that might work! either way i'd like to see it when you are done! Hope this helped!!!

I have seen many quilts that had words quilted into them...I think it is an awesome idea!!!
One thing to remember...it may be better to have a backing that the quilting thread does not show up on really well, the words will be backwards there...
One person used thread so it would not really show on the front, but did on the back, because they wanted the more personal message only to be noticeable when it was placed in front of a mirror.....

Thanks all for the quick replies! We are machine quilting. I didn't think about what it would look like on the back; I'm glad you brought that up. I'll have to consider thread choices front and back.

I look forward to any other ideas.

Thanks!

Darren

I have put words in my border quilting. It turned out OK. I did use thread that blended into the back.

Darren, If you didn't want to worry about the words showing up backwards on the back you could quilt them seperately. Just quilt through the top and batting then add the back.

My Bernina has several sets of letters. I remember making a small quilt for my youngest granddaughter. She had an idenity crisis. It seemed as if she thought everything belonged to her sister. I made her a log cabin quilt with ladybugs as the centers and quilted it by inserting her name in every other row of the log cabins. There was no way someone would think it was for her sister. At the time I didn't know about quilting without the backing. I don't remember what the back looked like. That was probably 9 years ago.

I have quilted messages in the front of quilts, but I always hand quilt them