I wear quilts! I learned to make pieced, traditional quilt type fabric and cut a sweatshirt pattern out of it. The batting happens to be flannel for wearability. People go nuts if I happen to wear one of these to a quilt show.
I think the Chinese and other older cultures used to make padded clothing for warmth. Houses weren't heated.
Some people simply don't have the room for a FMQ machine, some have no desire to use one.
I can do quite a bit of quilting with feed dogs up, Pfaff IDT down, and the foot lifter pedal on the machine.
The actual pattern I might be using is drawn and marked FREEHAND. Since it's usually small stuff, it isn't too bad. If the blocks are small enough - say a certain sized raggie, I'll use the embroidery machine and the bean stitch.
People need to lighten up.
BTW with those sweatshirts, I had quilted an oval pattern down the arm. I used a template, but used the triple straight stitch on the machine. Since it was red on black it was still vivid after 5 years. A couple of quilters wanted to know how I got that effect. The triple straight stitch is on most machines. even basic ones. You just have to count to know where your needle is when you need to pivot. Not much different than using a blanket stitch. You have to know where you are.
Last edited by Weezy Rider; 05-23-2012 at 03:57 PM.