A plea for worse quilting…

I went to Quilts UK at Sandown a couple of weeks ago, lovely show, I like having quilts and traders all together and being able to get outside for some fresh air with lunch.  But I saw more evidence of a trend that I do not like very much at all: pieced quilt tops quilted with an all-over pattern on a long-arm machine.

I have nothing against long-arm quilters, only these awful overall patterns that bear no relation to the piecing.  Why spend all that time carefully choosing fabrics and colours and making perfect points for a perfect pattern and then completely ignore the lot by having a random pattern superimposed?  Quilting should enhance the piecing and even really bad quilting does that far better than these patterns, however good the stitching is. Is it a lack of time for the piecers?  Well by all means have the piece long-arm quilted but put in a little extra thought (and money I suppose) and have a quilting pattern that uses the piecing design and really suits the top.  But better still quilt it yourself, by hand or machine.  Practice really does make perfect and besides hand quilting is the best therapy ever for calming down after a stressful day.  (If itdoesn’t feel that way you, try taking a class or two to hone your technique.)

We all call ourselves quilters - please can we all justify that title by more care with the actual quilting?

This entry was posted on 17/07/2009 at 08:05 am and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.