Local quilt show: observations

John - no offense taken here! I went to a quilt show last year where I saw much of the same as far as machine quilting. On the other hand, at another show, I saw more examples of machine quilting being done in a manner than enhanced and complemented the piecing, so that kind of work really is being done.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that it's not always the machine quilter who chooses the quilting design (this applies to those quilts done by a "professional"). Sometimes, for instance, the piecer tells the machine quilter that she wants to spend no more than a certain amount of money. The quilter then has to determine what kind of design she can use and still make money. Many times that is an edge-to-edge design or a form of meander. The piecer would get a more custom-designed quilting job if she wanted (or was able) to spend more money, but budgets don't always allow for that. Other times, the piecer specifically requests the kind of design you're describing - they want something that will hold all three layers together and nothing more. And, quite honestly, it appears there are piecers who just don't know/understand that their quilt could be even more beautiful if an appropriate quilting design were created for it.

In an ideal world, every piecer would have an unlimited budget for the quilting portion of the project and the machine quilter would find the perfect quilting design that would show off the piecing and make every piecer the star of the quilt show!

I'm looking forward to our local show this fall - will be interested to see if the trend is toward overall designs.

We have a local quilter that does a large meandering/mattress allover type pattern. It is really just plain old function. The work is a bargain in comparison to really beautiful artful machine quilting. Many of the guild members have their work done by this fellow and so lots of the work at their small show is his. For a dorm room, folks with kids or pets on the bed it works but it isn't the most creative choice. Some of my quilts have an allover pattern. I do lots of scrappy busy stuff that will be functional. There is that all the way to the hand quilting I do. I guess there is a place for all of it but I would like to see special work in shows. I am not sure that happens in small guild shows. Every time I go to the road to CA show I come away knowing just how inferior my MQ'ing is. Sure it is improving but on a regular machine there are limitations that just aren't around for long arm quilters. DH and I were talking about this last week. He has played guitar professionally but he could never in this life practice enough to be concert type guitar player. Everyone has different natural born capabilities. Of course hard work and determination go a long way even so. I know as folks have physical limitations there are reasons to have your work done by others. For myself, at this point, I could not call a quilt someone else quilted mine because I can do it myself. I do think there is room for it all though. Hopefully we all have tough toes around here. : ) Taria

I agree. Also many machine quilters haven't acquired the skills necessary to do the custom work that will enhance the pattern of the top. It takes a lot of practice, a bit more thinking, and perhaps a bit more imagination. I do all my own quilting, both hand and machine, in part because I'm too cheap to pay someone to do a really great job of longarm quilting. I use my regular machine (Elna 6003 Quilter's Dream). I'm not great at it, but I do try to do something other than allover stippling or meandering. I have meandered the center of a few small, quick quilts, but always did something a little different in the borders; I think those were Yellow Brick Road or similar patterns and simple meandering seemed appropriate.

The heaviest quilting I've ever done was on the Julia's Lily quilt near the bottom of . I was also happy with the way the red & pink Warm Wishes turned out. The other Warm Wishes quilt on that page was much simpler, all straight line, quilting.

Julia in MN

Louise > John - no offense taken here! I went to a quilt show last year where I saw

I can understand the limitations of money into the overall equation. But, I do all of the quilting on all of my quilts myself; with a machine, and proudly so.

1. If I didn't do it, all myself, I wouldn't call it, "My Quilt".
2. If I paid to have it quilted, I wouldn't enter it into a show.
3. I don't like the look of all over quilting on small pieced tops.
4. Number three does not apply to art quilts which are different than small pieced quilts, and have a different type of piecing pattern than traditional small pieced pattern quilts, and therefor might be a candidate for overall machine quilting. I don't make Art Quilts, so I have no personal experience with that element of the medium. I neither like or dislike them. They are a different kettle of fish, for me. Neither better nor worse. Just different. If I ever did do an Art Quilt, I would certainly consider an all over quilting pattern, if I thought it would not detract from the design. Maybe I am a traditionalist in this regard, but one of the quilts that I really appreciated was machine pieced, and hand quilted. The hand quilting was stitched in the ditch. Now there was somebody that took hand stitching to another level. She buried the stitches in the fold of the seam and they were not even seen in some instances. That takes commitment when it could have been done by machine with no foul. Except it wouldn't have been hand quilted. Kudo's to her. I wish I could do the hand stitching, but these old stubby hammer pounded fingers just won't cooperate. My own personal cross to bear, I guess.

John

I tend to do everything by hand and generally dislike machine quilting. Perhaps it's a sort of "style", but I really think there are far too many people who will take a very nice quilt top and literally ruin it with that sort of machine quilting you describe, and that is rather sad. Some machine quilting is beautifully done, but that seems to be the exception these days.

Stupid question, though -- if Person A makes a quilt top and then has it machine quilted by Person B, how can Person A put that quilt into a show or a competition? Does the quilt go in as by Person A and Person B? And is there a difference if the machine quilting is done by a professional or some sort of commercial enterprise?

John wrote:

I agree with you. The quilt makers are missing out on an important aspect of the work when they settle for this kind of quilting. Stitch in the ditch, echo, or outline takes much more time to do so, for "professionals", would be much more expensive. However, if you consider a quilt a work of art or a singular expression of artistic craft, then I would rather do a less than perfect job myself, and try to enhance the top's design. Almost anyone (barring physical restrictions) can get a walking foot and outline the major design elements, which would be better than what you describe. However, at a local show, people should be able to enter anything that they are proud of and want to show off, even if it isn't up to big show standards. We shouldn't make anyone feel as if their work isn't good enough to put in - that we are going to be laughing at them, or clicking our tongues in distaste. (I know you would never do that, John. No one in this group would, I'm sure. ;>)) Not everyone is into the esthetics of the craft. Some people like to piece but don't like to quilt, and want to save money for more fabric. Some may like the all over designs and don't care about winning prizes. Hopefully, the guilds involved have someone who can give talks about the design enhancing quality of the quilting. (I've seen a group of experienced hand quilters take a horrendous pieced top and turn it into a nice quilt with judicious quilting.) Those who care will listen, look, and learn. Those who don't will continue to produce attractive but less-than-they-could-be pieces. This is the way it has always been in the crafts and arts, and (sigh) we need both kinds to keep the arts going.

Turtle It's not the things you have that make you happy, it's the things you do.

It sounds like the quilting you're describing is what I think of as "edge to edge" rather than "custom." I think lots of quilts are finished that way by professional quilters when the quilt is not destined for stardom and customers don't want to pay for custom work. Lots of us finish quilts that way because of time constraints or lack of experience. Me, for one. My _quilting_ will not win awards anytime in the near future. But a few of my quilts might stand up decently against the competition in local or regional shows with regard to pattern/design, use of color, etc. When I use edge-to-edge quilting other than meandering, want the quilting design to "make sense" with the patchwork design (No roses on a brown geometric, for instance), but it's the patchwork and color that I'm concerned about. Maybe it's because I rarely use patterns... Or maybe I'm missing something in what you wrote.

--Heidi

(> Let me start off with a disclaimer. If any of you are offended by my

At the quilt show I just attended, there were both types of machine quilting - all over and specific to the quilt. We have a good number of machine quilters in our area that are absolutely wonderful. Their quilting definitely enhances the piecing. I know that some of the machine quilters work with the piecer from the start. One of the most intriguing quilts at this show was three dimensional. I talked to the lady that quilted it. She told me that she quilted the 3-D portions of the quilt first. Then the quilt top was put together and then she finished the machine quilting. The machine quilter is always given credit for her work.

And, then you have the 'utility' quilts that have an all-over meandering quilting that doesn't do a thing for the quilt. But, if that's what the piecer asked for and she's happy with it, who are we to question how her quilt was finished?

Donna in SW Idaho

Mary, in the few shows I've been to in the last couple of years, there were many tags that credited the quilter as well as the piecer. But just for argument's sake, what if the quilter is the one who wants to show the quilt? Shouldn't s/he also credit the one who put it together?

I haven't seen any difference in credit for a professional or commercial quilter. Even if one is doing it for a living, it's still one's art.

--Heidi

On Aug 15, 5:36=A0pm, "heidi (was rabbit2b)" wrote:

What I was commenting on was the line of stitching in the quilting passing over the joining of the piecing of the pattern on the quilt top without any regard to the direction or any element of the design of the pattern. Much like if you placed a large template of random stitching over a traditional patterned quilt top and then followed the template to sew together the three pieces of the top, batting, and backing. The stitching was not done with any regard to the pattern of the joined pieces, of the top. As if two different people had a hand in the completion of the quilt, but neither one of them had any idea what the other one was doing, as far as esthetics are concerned. It just seemed so mindless as to design. I don't care about not having enough money to hire a professional quilter who would look at the design and decide where to put the stitching so as to not degrade the whole piece of work with careless placement of stitching across the design lines of the pieced top. If the professional quilter was the sort of person who would do that, that person is hardly a professional. People have asked me to make furniture pieces that used shortcuts, so as to produce a cheaper cost of the item. I declined to do that sort of thing, and suggested they look elsewhere. It would be better for me not to do the quilt at all, if that was the choice I was given. I would rather do one or two quilts a year that I could afford to have done the "right" way, than a whole closet full of this malarkey, that I saw. Sorry for the strong statements, and I know others might not have the same opinions as myself, but there you have it. I am just saying what I would do, not what anybody else must or should do. The exceptions, as stated by others was for utility quilts, or pet bed quilts, or some other such use, but, hardly, for entry into a quilt show.

John

Sometimes quilt shows don't get as many entries as they would like. Then they start begging quilters to bring in quilts, any quilt, to fill the space. I've seen that at some quilt shows in our area. That's one reason you'll see quilts with the type of quilting you're talking about. They are there to fill space and weren't even intended to be a quilt show entry!

Donna in SW idaho

When you get a quilt professionally quilted, it's usually at least twice as much to get custom quilting, i.e. the type that respects the design of the quilt, than it is to get edge to edge quilting.

Some quilts suit edge to edge quilting, some don't! I've only once sent a quilt out to a quilter, I don't think I have a picture to hand unfortunately, but it is a quilt with pretty much all medium value fabrics, with no large areas of plain fabric. As it was queen size and I wasn't sure ditch quilting would quite make it quilted enough to hold it together, an allover design seemed to make sense. I browsed designs that my friend had available and found a wonderful grape design, which totally fitted in with the patterned fabric of the quilt, which was grapes too. We chose a thread that would neither stand out too much, or vanish completely and I'm thrilled with the result.

I now I have a problem as I've got two queen sized quilts that would be ruined by the kind of quilting you describe and ditch quilting would not be sufficient either, one I haven't even finished the borders, it's a large 64 point mariners compass, but once I realised the issues I would have quilting it, I stopped working on it.

I suspect a similar dilema is faced by the makers of the quilts you saw, whether they are consious of it or not.

Cheers Anne

Howdy!

You like what you like, John, and that's just fine. ;-)

Often in my quilts, which are quilted carefully & professionally by one Sandy Ellison, I quilt over the seam lines. I like the quilt to be one big piece, side to side, edge to edge, top to bottom. I esp. like to quilt circles or triangles that entwine & over-lap, definitely not sticking w/in the perimeter of the block(s). My books of historic &/ or antiques quilts show this to be a traditional & acceptable (look at the winners' ribbons!) way of doing things in the big wide quilting world. Some of the smaller quilt shows have some of the most exquisite quilts. That's where the quilter was comfortable showing it; cool. And some of the big shows I've been to, including The Really Big Quilt Show in Houston, have displayed some "winners" that made me wonder, "What the h#ll were they drinking when they judged this category?!?" I'm always amused (I've chosen "amused" rather than "perplexed" or "disappointed") when I go to one of the mid-size local shows and note that "all these gals had their quilts quilted by the same business quilters w/ their limited imagination". Also note who all took the same class & made nearly identical products. I don't like sloppy quilting. Also don't like that so much chocolate is fattening. I've learned to live with it. ;-D As a handquilter and quilting artist, I do believe that "quilting makes the quilt".

Cheers! R/Sandy - > >

I've had two quilts professionally quilted. The first was a queen-sized (to the floor) quilt that I just didn't want to tackle -- that was about

The second was a quilt I hated by the time I'd finished it (*bad* instructions, much more complicated than they should have been), and a long-armer who is a friend of mine asked if she could use it to practice for when she did her own in the same pattern. She did a custom job for a very low (unreasonably so!) price, and I'm very happy with it.

These days I tend to do smaller quilts, and I quilt them myself as my confidence increases. I think some quilts are great with all-over patterns, but others demand something more special. I used to think that the only way to quilt was to do each block individually, and I still think some quilts are best done that way. However, others lend themselves to other ways. There's room for all of them in "quilt-land", just as there's room for appliqué, piecing, art quilts and all of the variations of each.

Why are you suddenly on a borrowed Linux machine, Sandy????

As I said before, I've only had two quilts professionally quilted. The first one never saw the inside of a show. The second one did -- at the request of the quilter, a friend of mine. I had, of *course* credited her as quilter on the label, and I entered it in a category for two-person quilts. She and I were both completely delighted when it won a judge's choice ribbon. :) I offered to give her the ribbon, but she insisted I keep it.

LOL John! I could have predicted your take on the type of FMQ you are describing. Why? Because all of your beautiful creations are so perfectly engineered, the totally random version of FMQ is just at odds with your personality. :-)

No hackles raised here. I love our RTCQ diversity. I'll admit I admire a wonderfully randomly stippled quilt, however, my first love is more traditional quilting.

Best regards, Michelle in Nevada

Thank you so much, John and all who've joined in. This discussion certainly opens my eyes and heart to quilting situations that hadn't crossed my little mind. Of course there are quilters who FM or have it done that are doing the best they can, or maybe not, or maybe just all they can afford, or have access to. ( That may be the worst sentence I ever wrote.) So some quilting could be better executed at a mattress pad factory. So what? We can still salute their courage to enter a quilt show. We can still enjoy their choices or at least learn from them. Do we really need all of the quilts in a show or in our linen closet to be exquisite? I find myself guilty of seeing some and imagining I could have done so much better. Even some where I thought the quilter should take up bean counting or raise worms. Years ago, when I saw quilt after quilt that were nearly identical, I didn't groan but I did wonder why anyone would do that. Never crossed my uppity mind that some are truly not able to choose colors, fabrics, patterns. Even so, they enjoy quilting. Good for them. So. I've grown by this and our other quilt show discussions. Let's enjoy the next quilt show and be happy for every quilter. Even if we have to don dark glasses and ear plugs. Polly

"Michelle C."

I'm very familiar with the eternal battle between traditionalists & purists and innovators & radicals. That said,

1. I had no idea something like this would be such a big deal, but then I hadn't really thought about it because I hadn't been aware of it.

1. I now have something else to look for/at/critique at the local show coming up.

2. I think I now better understand the concept of "quilt police".

My own observation (probably a "duh" to most folks here...) is that there are two aspects to quilting; an artistic aspect and a (oh, crap I can't find the right word...) the skill and accuracy of physically crafting the quilt. IOW, one might have an imaginative and artistically brilliant design with regard to shapes and colors, yet the quilter can't seam to sew a straight line, get corners to meet, or quilt it without skips, loops, and other catastrophes. OTOH, one might be a master sewer, quilt with perfection, but have no sense of color or proportion. (Am I making sense?) This is just one other reason I can think of that one might have someone else do the machine quilting. Should it bar that particular artist/crafter from entering a piece in a show? I don't know, but it falls under #2 above. I don't think there is a cut & dry answer. YMMV.

Doc