Kmurph

I’m a new quilter and I was wondering if anyone has experience adding more quilting (using a regular sewing machine) after a quilt is bound and washed? I made some quilts and machine quilted them with stitch in the ditch quilting. They now seem a little plain and would like to add more quilting. Would it ruin the quilt? Would I get a lot of folds in the fabric?

sewingpup

I think you could add some more. Just be aware of how much "puff" you have in the unquilted parts and make sure you don't push the "puff" to the previous quilting in the ditch. That will create a fold you do not want. This might be easier to control if you are doing free motion quilting, It might be harder to do if you are using a walking foot. I would make a practice sandwich where you stitch squares or whatever pattern you did when you stitched in the ditch. and then add the extra quilting you wanted to do. Long arm quilters often will "stitch in the ditch" to stabilize a quilt and then return and do the free motion feathers or whatever. Just practice a bit first.

LAF2019

yes you can do it. sometimes it makes it a little harder to handle on your home machine, since you have already cut off the extra length on the sides for your binding, but it will not ruin the quilt.
you may want to look up how to bury your threads, since you do not have the edges of the quilt to run your stitches off to. it just helps things look cleaner instead of having thread build up at the binding edge, for example, because you had to start and stop.
Hope that makes sense!

Karamarie

Gee, I never thought of that. I think it would work with the thoughts in previous post. I might have to try that.

cjsews

If your quilt is a bit puckered from washing, I would try to iron it first. This would give you a more fit area to work on

pennyhal2

I think it depends on how flat the quilt is now. I've washed quilts and found that sometimes the unquilted parts seem to have "puffy" (I can't think of another word for the loose fabric) areas that would cause the quilt to have lumpy areas when quilted more densely. I've found this difficult to deal with and had decided not to quilt in those areas. Since I now glue the fabric to the batting, I don't have that problem anymore. However, I do a lot more quilting on my quilts as my skills have improved over the years.

I'd suggest that you try quilting in a small area and see how you like the results. Sometimes I'm must more picky about what "will do" versus must be "good enough" to give away.