I have a guestion for yall. I have seen several Grandmother Flower Garden quilts and they were always hand quilted. I have a lady from church that wants me to quilt one her mother made in the 70's (yes out of double knit). I told her I do not hand quilt only machine quilt. She still wants me to do it because as she says it is doing me no good as it is. This is a sweet lady who is herself at least 80 years old so I do want to accomodate her desire to have the quilt completed. The question is do I just try to quilt in the ditch on the hexagons or a
A 1/4 in. inside each piece would be a humongous amount of stopping and starting and knotting, wouldn't it? Yikes! Horribly slow and time consuming. And quilting in the ditch.... I would guess that the intersections won't be perfectly matched, so you'd be ducking and dodging all over the place trying to follow the ditch. I think I would do some kind of all over pattern. Not necessarily a pantograph (but that would work, too) but some vines- feathered or with leaves- or stippling or whatever.
One possibility- what I saw a lady with a Gammill doing- she was following the seam lines but rather than stitch in the ditch due to imperfectly matched intersections she did a snaky, shallow, gentle 'S' line over all the seam lines. That way she could go right over the intersections which were almost an inch off in places. But the double knit is prolly quite thick and the seams would be terribly bulky to sew thru and you'd chance skipped stitches. I think I just talked myself out of this! LOL
And then it will need binding... I think I'd do a pillow turn rather than mess with all those miters to follow the edge with binding it. This quilt top may have great sentimental value, but it's really not worth the amount of work it's going to need to finish it.... in my not so humble opinion.
I've been there too. A quilt top that looked great on ebay was just like Leslie described - intersections off, some seams too thick to believe. I tried the logical quilting manner and dismally failed. That quilt wound up in a hurricane shelter and was clean and warm but it surely wasn't worth stealing. Leslie's right - a gentle stippling or perhaps vines and feathers is about the only way. Because of the quilt's sentimental value, the top is worth finishing and I join in wishing you well. Polly
Double-knit? Well, then, quilt thru' the centers of the pieces, in hexagonal circles. Referring to this example
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a small hexagon outline in the blue inner row;another, larger hexagon outline in the green row,then an overlapping hexagon outline in the connecting (white) rows,overlapping sometimes because the white goes around all the "gardens".The hexagon outlines will enhance the pattern, no need to do fiddlylittle quilting inside each tiny hexagon piece. D-k is tough fabric, this will be a tough quilt. And perfect formachine quilting.
I don't know how old you are or through which decades you have been sewing but I well remember sewing a lot on that double knit polyester. You've garnered some excellent information on the techniques you might use for the quilting but the one thing that hasn't been brought up is the needle on your machine.
I went through a bucket of sweat, tears and mumbled bad words with both my
1940 Singer and my "brand new", at that time, Viking that did not sew at all well on that *new* fabric. The sewing machine repairman who came to my house to "fix" my machines (yes, once upon a time dear, long, long ago, on a galaxy far away, sewing machine repairmen DID make house calls) looked at the garment with all the skipped stitches and pulled out some packs of ball point needles, put them in my machines, and solved the problem. He was kind enough to explain the reasons why this worked before he left....then he saddled up his dinosaur and rode off to his next house call.
You just might want to put a Ball Point needle in your machine instead of a 'Universal' or 'Sharp' before you start your machine quilting. The Universal needle, with it's more rounded point, just may skip stitches. The thicker the layers the more likely you'll get skipped stitches since the needle can hit a fiber and just 'bounce back' instead of going through and looping into the bobbin thread. The Sharp can snag or actually pierce the fibers and fray or break them causing runs and/or holes in the fabric. I don't know how big the quilt is but you might also want to change your needle often since this tougher than Kevlar fabric has a tendency to put burs on even a Ball Point needle after a relatively short time and this can cause more skipped stitches and runs and snags. I also don't know how much cutting you'll be doing to finish the project but that old double knit polyester was infamous for rapidly dulling scissors, probably now also doing the same to a roller blade. You can get away with cutting cotton with marginally dull blades but that 1970's miracle fabric will fight you. Just a little heads up info.
Learn from the mistakes of others, you won't live long enough to make them all yourself, Val
I'd agree with you that good ol' C&C cotton/polyester, upper and lower would do the trick. As long as she has a cotton or non stretchy backing she wouldn't have to worry about the thread breaking from the top stretching too much on the finished quilt.
Finding yardage of polyester double knit might not be easy. (Unless, of course, you have access to a closet like my DH's. I expect he has an old leisure suit as well as his Cub Scout uniform. Never know when he might need them.) Polly
"SuzzettsFabric" WOW you all are a wealth of information. I think I am going to have to find some old scrap of doubleknit to practice on. Thanks a bunch.
I like to quilt GFG with a free motion, sunburst, sort of wavy line that ends in a curve. Radiate out from the center of each block (or start on one side and go through the center) ... connect or not, depending on if you want to snip threads. Lobo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Delete the obvious to reply to me personally. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Actually, I thought it was pretty easy to sew -- never had to worry about finishing the seams and it had enough stretch to ease together nicely. I did a lot of sewing with the stuff. It never wrinkled, it wore like iron, it had some stretch, so it never felt really tight. When it came out we thought it was wonderful! But I sure wouldn't buy it now. :)
Julia in MN
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It's still available and being made, just not usually called that any longer. Any of the "ponte" type knits are a double knit and are often made of polyester fibers. Part of the "problem" here is terminology and perceptions. Lots of poly double knits are being worn, but because of advances in making the fiber and in using it they don't feel the same as in the '70s. Jo-Ann's has a regular line of fabric that is a poly dk, and some that probably are.
Pati, > I see double knit yardage at the thrift store fairly often.
This is a blast from the past - I made my daughter lots of clothes in the late 70s using the double knit. For some reason, my mother loved to quilt it - ick!! The resulting quilts were heavy as lead!! They tend to slip off the bed due to the weight.
One other thought - would the lady be happy if you did it "comforter style"? Just making the yarn ties through the center of each flower piece perhaps. Not each piece, just the yellow one in the center of each set. This would tack it together well enough to use. Mom did some quilts for my daughters like that and they are still, twenty+ years later, holding together and colors like new.
I lost Mom in January of this year, and found lots of quilts, always completely done by hand. The pieced ones were stitched inside the piece in a shadowing effect, i.e., little diamonds inside the diamond shapes of a lone star quilt. Mom was 87 and still quilting with double knit when she passed away. One of her last ones was a butterfly that we dubbed the "cancer quilt" because she did most of it during chemo. Thrift shops and garage sales were her source, plus an occasional auction, usually of an elderly lady's estate.
I brought home mostly completed ones because I knew I couldn't/wouldn't work with the double knit. She had older ones in actual cotton. One of the treasures was a Canadian maple leaf from my great-great grandmother. Moni
IMO you'd best not hand quilt double knits at all! There are no quilt police. Tell her you might be willing to tie it. Call me a fabric snob, but it seems to me like double knits aren't worth the bother of quilting. (My mother made some truly ghastly objects, and I'm entitled to love them for her sake, but I wouldn't ask anyone else to torture herself!) Roberta in D
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corporate packages that have acce=ss to 100,000+ newsgroups Well I see 2 votes for tieing the quilt. Good idea. I may just talk to her about that. I may even ask her to help me. I think she might enjoy getting to work on it herself.
Moni, My mom died 2 years ago from breast cancer. She completed only 1 large quilt. I found in her stash a few quilt blocks completed but not sewn together. I will do something with them for my siblings someday. I did find a very old pieced 9 patch quilt top. I found out from my aunt that the quilt was started by my Grandmother before my aunt who is 74 was ever born. Apparently my grandmother started it when her son was a baby but he died shortly before my aunt was born and my grandmother was to depressed to finish it. It looks like the quilt was from old dresses - late 20's very early 30's. I like the old quilts even just the tops to look at the fabric. Fabric had alot of character as does ours today - just different. Suzzy
Mom was pretty prolific with her crocheting and quilting so our whole family got lots of afghans and quilts. One daughter picked one I always thought of as "ugly", but to her, it was the quilt she always used when staying at Mom's house. My girls stayed with my folks A LOT, so the familiar things were treasures to them.
I hope you do make something for your siblings. It is a great link from generations past. Don't you love the old fabric? Mom used the original feedsacks as her fabric in clothes and quilts and, since I was a child of the 50s, so she had clothes she made for me from the same stuff she had saved. I've got scads of the repro fabric that will be for MY next quilt. You know - the one after the new baby quilt, baby samplers, finishing one daughter's quilt, a prayer shawl for one daughter............................oh well, I like seeing the fabric anyway!! Moni
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