Mod-Mood Quilt 8 ~ Get Your Stitch On

Step 8: Get Your Stitch On

Yay! My quilt top is done. The last part of the piecing process, squaring up the curves by adding bias cut, strip pieced corners as reviewed in Step 7 is finished. Now it's time to stitch my moody, modern, pieced top into a quilt.

A. Make a quilt sandwich out of your top, batting, and something nice for the back. I used two layers of Fairfield's Polyfil Natural Cotton Batting for the filling. If you have no idea what I'm talking about when I say "quilt sandwich", refer to Oh Franson's excellent tutorial on Making The Quilt Sandwich.

B. Mark your stitching line without a template. I use chalk to draw my stitching pattern free-hand. Sometimes I only chalk one line of the pattern and then echo it out across the rest of the quilt. Sometimes I stitch in the ditch. Think creatively about how you want your stitching lines to complement and contrast your piecing lines.

C. Hand quilt with multi-colored pearl cotton. I use a medium sized embroidery needle with #8 pearl cotton to hand stitch most of my quilts. I'm not much of a machine quilter. I enjoy the meditative process of hand-stitching, and I love the look.  Big, hand-stitches with colored thread is a nod to tradition with a modern twist. Since the thread is thicker and my stitches are bigger, hand-quilting takes less time. I recommend Sew Mama Sew's tutorial, Learn How to Hand Quilt, for the basic mechanics.

In Step 9 I'll show you how to do an invisible binding.

Make Your Own Modern Mood Quilt

If you are entertaining the idea of making your own mod-mood quilt, I want to hear from you. What strikes your fancy? What’s holding you back? Join the challenge! Share images of your process on the Mod Mood Quilt Flickr pool. Or grab a Mod-Mood Quilt button here to post on your blog and join my blog roll.

If you are already working on a mood quilt, post an update or any questions you have about the process or techniques and I will respond.