Originally Posted by
Tartan
Instead of quilting quilts, some people "tie" their quilts. You thread a large needle with yarn, embroidery floss, perle cotton etc. and with your quilt laying on a flat surface, you go through the layer from the top, go under about 1/4 inch of the sandwich and back up to the top. Tie the 2 ends of the thread together in a double knot and clip the threads at about 1/2 inch long. These " ties" are made every 3 -4 inches over the surface of the quilt.
Tied quilts are "quilted". Anything that holds the three layers (sometimes only two) together is quilting.
I put my quilts on a large frame made of four sticks - 1X4's - with holes drilled every 6 inches all the way down the stick. I have a strip of fabric stapled all along the length of each stick. They are then held together with bolts and the fabric is pinned to the fabric strip on the stick. After the outside edges have been finished as far as I can reach, bolts are removed one side at a time and it gets rolled up on the sticks and the bolts put in a new place.
I have tied two quilts with pearl cotton and they promptly came loose. I had to go over the entire quilt with fray-check on each knot to be sure they wouldn't come undone again. Those I tied with wool yarn NEVER come out. They just get tighter each time you wash them.
Some people tie the knots tightly to the quilt, and some leave them loose so that the batting remains fluffy under the knot. Some people cut the ends of the threads about a half inch long, and others leave them up to four inches long. Most of the embroidery-thread-tied quilts I've seen have the threads about four inches long.
Some tape their quilt backs to a smooth floor with duct tape, then pin the other layers to the back and work around it on the floor. Some clamp the quilt layers to a table a section at a time and move it as each section is tied..
Lots of different ways to do this. Hope you can understand this.