Originally Posted by angelarose
I've been quilting for 2 yrs. I'm 65 yrs. old. I sew in a spare bedroom and keep supplies and fab. there. I bought a Janome, rather basic sewing machine which I love. I've made about 5 quilts, taken a quilting class for 5 weeks. Two of the quilts still have to be batted and backed. They're beatiful tops, but what is it about the final steps of completing a quilt that I read so many are guilty of. Is it a psychological "thing" or what. I truly want to know what it really is: why so many quilt tops are yet to be made into the final sandwich?
There are many reasons. For me, I was doing large quilt tops by hand and I can machine piece a lot faster than I can hand quilt. Once I got a decent machine I began to learn to machine quilt and I've started getting a lot of my UFOs finished. I didn't have a decent machine for the first 16 years I quilted so you can guess as to how many UFOs that added up to. That said, my main problem is sandwiching a quilt. I hate it, hate it, hate it! I love to do binding and I keep trying to find someone locally who hates to bind and enjoys sandwiching. I figure we could switch jobs. So far no luck.
Also, oh boy! One of my unfinished projects is a Yellow Brick Road pattern of batiks and other complementary fabrics. Then I purchase some lime Minkee for the backing. No batting necessary I was advised. So I stitched in the ditch....A very hard technique for me to accomplish. I used a walking foot, too. I fail in keeping my stitching right in the ditch. Frustrating. I've ripped out hundreds of stitches. Any advice on sewing straight stitches in a ditch???????????
One of the biggest problems is speed. You really have to slow down with this method or your quilting will wobble outside the lines. Most quilters when they learn to quilt do not realize that the quilting can take just as long (or longer!) then making the quilt top. I know when I finish a top, a lot of times I feel as if I've got the majority of the quilt finished when in actuality I'm only halfway done. You also need to make sure you've got enough pins or basting in to really hold the quilt sandwich together or it will shift as you are quilting, which can be very frustrating. Hope some of this helps. Good luck with the quilt!