I have recently started hand quilting, which has introduced me to an entirely new way of questioning my quilting abilities.
I can sit for an evening, work my way along a quilting line, look back at my stitches and think they don't look half bad. Then I start reading about hand quilting and discover that six stitches per inch is often considered a reasonable place to begin. Keep reading and you'll find people talking about eight, ten, twelve, and even twenty stitches per inch.
Twenty.
I'm currently struggling to get four.
Naturally, this made me curious. How in the world are people making stitches that small? Is there some technique I'm missing? Is it the needle? The batting? The thread? Or is the rather disappointing answer simply that I need to sit here and do this about ten thousand more times?
And then, because one quilting question never seems to remain one quilting question for very long, I started wondering about the women who made those beautifully hand-quilted antique quilts. They didn't have YouTube videos demonstrating the rocking stitch in slow motion. They didn't have LED lights, magnifiers, ergonomic thimbles or the ability to order six different packages of needles from the recliner because somebody on the internet said one of them might change their life.
They still managed to make those tiny stitches.
So, what am I missing?
My first thought was the needle, and there may actually be something to that. Traditional hand-quilting needles are called betweens, and they're surprisingly short if you've never used one. That short length isn't accidental. It makes the rocking motion used in traditional hand quilting easier and allows several small stitches to collect on the needle before the thread is pulled through.
Then there are milliners, or straw needles, which some hand quilters prefer. They're longer, and the shaft remains fairly consistent in diameter through the eye, which can make them particularly useful with heavier threads.
I would love to tell you that my research uncovered the best hand-quilting needle and we can all go buy it and move on with our lives.
It did not.
Apparently choosing a hand-quilting needle is like choosing most things in quilting. There are strong opinions, perfectly reasonable arguments on several sides, and experienced quilters making beautiful quilts with completely different choices.
The more I read, the more I think the best needle may simply be the one that allows your hand to make the stitch comfortably. I'm going to experiment with several because I don't know yet what that needle is for me.
I also hadn't given much thought to batting. I knew batting changed the loft, drape and appearance of a finished quilt, but I hadn't really considered what it was doing to the person trying to push a tiny needle through it.
Of course it matters.
A thin batting compresses differently than a lofty one, and the needle has less distance to travel through the quilt sandwich. Fiber content and density affect how easily that needle passes through as well. Suddenly "How do I make smaller stitches?" had turned into "What exactly am I trying to make those stitches through?"
Then I got to thread. Finer traditional hand-quilting threads lend themselves to a different stitch than the heavier threads often used for more visible modern hand quilting. Fabric density matters too. The quilt sandwich I happen to be holding isn't necessarily the same quilt sandwich someone else was holding when she produced those beautiful little stitches I'm comparing mine to.
Which brings me back to practice.
I was hoping to find a loophole here.
There doesn't appear to be one.
The traditional rocking stitch itself is a learned movement. The hand above the quilt and the finger underneath have to work together while the needle rocks through all three layers. Experienced hand quilters can load several tiny stitches onto the needle before pulling the thread through, and when you watch someone who has done it for years, the whole thing looks ridiculously easy.
Then you try it.
It is not ridiculously easy.
But that made me think again about those antique quilts and the women who made them. We're looking at the finished work and not necessarily considering the hands that made it.
Many women learned to sew when they were children. They mended clothing, made garments, worked on household linens and spent years handling needles and thread because sewing was an ordinary part of life. By the time an experienced quilter sat down to produce the kind of fine hand quilting we admire today, she may already have spent thousands of hours sewing.
I have not.
Not even close.
There's also a bit of survivor bias involved when we look at historical quilts. Not every woman in the nineteenth century was sitting around producing twenty perfect stitches per inch. Everyday quilts survive with larger stitches, uneven quilting, repairs, worn fabrics and all sorts of evidence that actual human beings made and used them. The spectacular examples are spectacular precisely because they are exceptional, and those are understandably the ones more likely to be carefully preserved, collected, photographed and displayed.
I'm comparing my first attempts not only with experienced hand quilters, but sometimes with the best work of generations that came before me.
That seems a little unreasonable when I put it that way.
So I'm still curious about six stitches per inch. I want to get there. I want to try different needles and pay attention to what happens when I use different batting and thread. Mostly, though, I need to practice the rocking motion until my fingers understand something that my brain currently understands only in theory.
For now, four stitches per inch is where I am.
And I'm actually okay with that.
Hand quilting is one more thing I've discovered about quilting that looked fairly straightforward until I tried it myself. Then the door opened and, behind it, was another entire world of needles, thread, batting, technique, history and people who have spent decades getting very, very good at something.
I seem to keep finding those doors.
That's probably one of the reasons I love quilting.
Of course, I know myself well enough to know how this will probably go. Someday I'll look down, count six reasonably even stitches in an inch and be ridiculously pleased with myself.
For approximately five minutes.
Then I'm going to wonder how they get eight.
If you're an experienced hand quilter, I'd really like to hear how this happened for you. Was it simply practice? Did changing your needle, batting or thread make a noticeable difference? And, perhaps most importantly, do you ever stop counting the stitches?
~Chris
