crazy quilt question

The beloved Pfaff is gone for good now. She was dropped on her head about 20 years ago and would only run backwards. DD just turned her around and learned to sew backwards. Katrina took her from us but she stitched faithfully for many years. Farewell, dear friend. I don't know what the newer Pfaffs can do (probably just about anything) but the old Pfaff certainly could produce fancy stitches that looked hand stitched. You "tweak" the stitch just the least bit to keep it from looking machine perfect. You can also couch over heavier threads with a SM for a hand look. Then, too, the fancy stitches by machines even as old as the Singers from the 50's can be really good. Loading on two threads on top can also give your stitches that look you're wanting. My goodness, how did you get me started on this? Polly

Hi Linda, I know, it seems to take forever to hand stitch, but it's just so darned relaxing :-). Have you considered mixing hand/machine stitching?

One trick passed along to me by Martha Green, a well known crazy quilter, is that she chooses a thread to use, and stitches a particular stitch on a block. She then picks up another block, uses that thread on the next block, and so on. Kind of an assembly line type thing, but her blocks never, ever look as if they are made that way. You could use this system with machine stitching too.

If you are having trouble making even hand stitches on the patches, I would be happy to share a few tricks I have for that. I am always out to promote love for crazy quilt stitching. :-)