How do you achieve that elegant, yet hand-crafted look?
 

I often think about the final outcome of the quilt that I'm making. While I want it to look well-made, I don't want it to look precision made. I want a hand-crafted look. Otherwise, I'd just go to Macy's and buy a quilt made in China. I actually like that my seams aren't perfect and that my blocks have a slightly, wonky look to them...not TOO wonky, but just a little bit, to show that someone actually made this by hand and with love; not in a sweat shop. I generally put some hand needle work on the quilt and I always make my own, embroidered labels. I would love to hand quilt, but my arthritis flares up every time that I try, so I often tie quilts, which has a homey look and feel. What do you do?

~ Cindy

I achieve a pleasingly dorky/wonky/ home-made charm completely naturally without any conscious efforts. Probably the secret to my "very unique" look is to have bad lighting in my sewing room, leading me to think that the color I am putting together are a fabulous match. In good light, people always comment on my daring use of color, which I believe is a nice way of saying "wow -- that really doesn't go".

True...LOL...I don't have to TRY too hard at it to get that wonkiness. :D Another thing that I do is to throw in something that just isn't supposed to be there. EG: Log cabin...light, dark, light, dark, light dark, RED, light, dark, etc. The red shouldn't really be there, but in the end it all seems to work. Sometimes I'll put a block in upside down, on purpose.

~ C.

I also have arthritis and was not able to hand quilt with the traditional method, because of the finger bending and wrist movement required. I was reading a discussion of hand quilting here on the quiltingboard, as I just couldn't give up the idea of hand quilting. Someone mentioned the Thimblelady method; her book is called 'Perfect Hand Quilting without Pain' by Liuxin Newman. The method is similar, but uses a thimble that fits down on the finger, and eliminates all of the hand stress associated with the traditional method. I can now hand quilt without any ill effect. I found her book used on amazon, but she also has a website and a video available. (I imagine if I'd had the video, it wouldn't have taken quite as long to get the hang of it.)

Too funny!! I achieve the same charm through not so perfect cutting and piecing. My quilting is pretty good.....

I use her thimble as well and do find it is much less stressful/painful than a traditional thimle.

Hmmm, have you actually taken a good look at those made in China quilts from Macy's (or any department store)?

They are definitely quite wonky and ill made. The hand quilting stitches are large and irregular and the quality of the fabric and workmanship in these quilts will start to disintegrate after only a few washings. Before I started quilting I bought two of these on sale and they started to fall apart quite quickly. Once I started quilting I could see the workmanship was shoddy as were the materials used. I do understand they are sweatshop conditions and I paid a pittance for them. A handmade Amish quilt sells for the thousands and I wouldn't make a quilt for sale for any less. I paid a very far cry from that. Way less than $100 for two.

Anyway, these quilts are far from precision made.

But I digress... I agree with you I want my quilts to look handcrafted and have that "artisan" touch to them. The fact that all my quilted motifs vary because my LA is hand guided by me and not a computer is part of that. And I have yet to make a quilt where every single seam intersection matches exactly and there isn't a point cut off or floating somewhere in that quilt. I still strive for that precision but when I am pressing my blocks and see an intersection 1/16" off or a point just barely chopped off I have to admit I mutter close enough a lot more than I take the block back to my machine and rip and resew. I save that for the ones that are really off.

I LOVE when people do that - one of my grandmothers used to include some subtle "flaw" in many of her quilts - a print used in place of a solid, a pinwheel that spins the opposite direction from all its mates... It was fun to hunt for it, try to find it, it wasn't always easy. My sister & I often were given matching quilts as Christmas presents and we'd have to discover the 'flaw' in each of our quilts and that's how we'd be able to tell them apart.

She didn't do it in ALL of her quilts, just enough of them so that if you didn't find the weirdo block you had to wonder if you were just missing it. Sometimes it was VERY subtle; my Mom had one that had one square that was just slightly a different color; it wasn't noticeable until years had gone by and it faded differently from the rest. And Gran would never admit when it was deliberate and when she'd just run out of a certain fabric, LOL.

Somehow I haven't started doing that in my quilts yet. I think they're wonky enough on their own...maybe when I reach her level of skill I'll feel differently!

I think this is the first time I've ever seen someone say they were afraid their quilts might be mistaken for factory made imports. For me, the more precise and accurate mine are, the happier I am with them. I have no worry at all that anything leaving my studio will ever be mistaken for mass produced no matter how close it comes to the ideal. My guess is that master quilters aren't bothered by that worry either.

Ha!

I have enough flaws in my quilts already.

I'm not about to deliberately place a flaw in it

PeeWeeHerman-"I meant to do that!"-LOL!