The flowering snowball is finished. I’m so tickled with how this quilt turned out and can’t wait to start on the next one. The quilting went really quickly and I love the old fashioned look and feel of the pick stitching along with the 30’s style fabrics.
As for the tip, when I started doing the quilting on this one, I knew I wanted my stitches to be roughly 1/4″, with 1/4″ spacing and was trying to figure out how to get fairly close (knowing that eyeballing the stitch length and spacing probably wouldn’t work very well for me). First I tried marking 1/4″ from the tip of the needle with a black fine point Sharpie, which I then lit on fire hoping to heat set it well enough to last. It lasted for a while but eventually it started rubbing off and getting harder and harder to see. So, rather than do that again, I just got the Dremel tool out and scratched the needle shank 1/4″ from the tip. Now while I know that sounds strange and probably isn’t something most quilters would suggest, it worked like a charm. As the needle passes through the fabric, you can feel that scratch on the shank of the needle catch a touch on the fabric and automatically know that you’re at your 1/4″ mark. While I wouldn’t necessarily suggest using this trick on anything other than cotton fabrics, for fear that it might cause a snag or pull in the fabric, I had no problems at all with this issue on cotton. While my stitches aren’t perfect and I wouldn’t want anyone to take a ruler to them, they also aren’t supposed to be perfect on this type of stitch so it’s all good!!
i love the quilt and the quilting!!
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Thank you so much! I’m tickled with how it turned out! Have already cut the fabrics for the next one since I loved it so much.
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I love your Snowball quilt! I cannot wait to see the next one. Love the pick stitching. That is a genius tip with the needle mark. I cannot wait to try it. You go girl!
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Thank you! I can’t wait to see the next one either! 🙂
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