Slow work

 

...tie granny knot... snip thread ends even... thread through needle... thread needle into quilt and out again... snip threads...

 

...times a billion...

...slow work, but rather enjoyable too - 

the kind of work that allows you to be thinking about what to cook for dinner, 

or which colour to paint that table, 

or more importantly, to dream up the next quilt...

Quilting my 'Regeneration 2012' quilt

 

Quilting is underway now... well, actually, it's completed already, after a day-long quilting marathon.

 

The next step is to pull off the bits of paper you can see here (used as a stitching guide) and tie off and bury all the threads.

 

Below you can see part of the back of the quilt. I deliberately keep the tension on the top thread a bit loose so that the bottom thread never pulls through to the top (I like to use white thread on the bottom to match the backing fabric).

Nearly there. Maybe I need to call this quilt 'The Eleventh Hour'...

Psychology

When you have about a hundred million threads to tie off and bury, it helps, psychologically, if you take some beautiful photos first.

Sorting out loose ends

OK, this is major technological advancement for this little blog. Hope it works! This is a video clip of my thread burying process. I know it fascinates a lot of people that the threads are tied off by hand in this way. Maybe you can see from the video clip that once I'm going, it's a smooth and relaxing process!

In case your wondering, the steps I am going through here are:
- selecting a pair of threads to tie (each line of stitching has two threads - the top thread and the bottom thread - at its beginning and end)
- tying a granny knot in the pair of threads
- trimming the pair of threads to the same length
- threading them onto the needle
- using the needle to thread them between the layers of the quilt
- trimming off the excess thread