Thread Sketching on a Whole Cloth Quilt

Today I’m sharing a quilting first for me – a whole cloth quilt! I’ve never made a quilt that had no piecing on the front & it was an interesting experience. Especially since the front fabric was a solid color, no print at all. I also thread sketched the name on it & it had to be the longest name I’ve ever done! Let’s take a peak at this very simple quilt & I’ll share what I learned from making it.

A First For Me

Although this quilt was fairly simple, I used two different presser feet to make it. I started with my modified free motion or darning foot to do the thread sketching. Then I used a walking foot for all the straight line quilting & binding. I’m also showing my storage system for my presser feet because it’s awesome & I share it every chance I get! It’s meant for bead storage, but it’s great for all sorts of things. : )

As I mentioned above, I started with thread sketching the name & it was a doozy! I’ve done this before, but usually it’s on a smaller scale than this. I laid out guide lines with my ruler for the letters & sketched the name on with a pencil. Then I traced the letters with my sewing machine, going over each one several times.

I used straight pins to hold things in place when I did the thread sketching because they’re easier to remove when your going in all directions. The backing goes on after this step so the letters don’t show on the back. I used safety pins to hold all the layers together for quilting.

Here’s a closer look at the letters…

One thing I would definitely do differently next time is lay out my lines before putting in all those safety pins! That would have insured my safety pins were between the lines when sewing. My favorite thing to mark with is this Clover chalk wheel. It really makes it easy to mark lines without pulling on the fabric too much.

I drew diagonal lines 6″ apart & broke them over the name.

I noticed my stitches were looking too small in some areas about half way through quilting. Then I realized I had forgotten to change my needle from an embroidery needle to a topstitch needle. It really does make a difference y’all! Since it was too late to change at that point I kept on going, but you can see below how different the stitch length is in some areas.

A topstitch needle really helps keep the stitches to a more even length & I try to always use it for quilting as well as, well, topstitching! ; D

Here’s the backing of the quilt, which is just a light grey with white dots.

The request for this quilt was that it be very simple and fairly plain. It was so hard to resist adding extra details & quilting!

Fixing a Botched Binding

Y’all if you have a serger use it on your quilt edge before binding! It makes it so much easier! This picture also makes me realize that I really need to scrub down my cutting mat…

I opted to use the backing fabric for the binding…

Then I set about clipping the binding & marking my starting point so I could finish it with a nice mitered join…

All was well until I realized I cut something too short! When I sewed my ends together there was more quilt edge than binding at the join. I decided to cut it apart and sew it down…

Then I made a little patch of sorts to fix my problem. I cut a piece of leftover binding to about 3″ & pressed under each end. Then I stitched it on the fold just beside the edge of the sewn down binding.

I folded it all to the back…

Tucked under the end, pressed, & then sewed around the edges. This makes it a design feature instead of a design flaw! : D

It does leave the back edge open, which can be hand sewn down. I wound up putting another line of stitching around the whole edge because I liked the way it looked better.

Here’s the finished whole cloth quilt held up by my aunt who is gifting this to a friend…

It turned out pretty well for my first go at a whole cloth quilt, but here are some things I would do differently:

• Use spray basting – The limited quilting & light background really shows off any little mistake & I feel like that would help the fabric stay tighter when quilting.
• Use something besides a pencil to mark my lines – Those guide lines did not wash out! I’ve never had that happen before, but maybe it has & I just didn’t notice. The letters get covered up by thread, so it’s hard to tell. I’ve got to stitch over those lines & make it part of the design now!
• Hopefully be able to do more quilting! This was a limitation of the order, but I really think it would be fun to do one with more quilting. Maybe a future project!

I hope y’all enjoyed seeing my first whole cloth quilt & maybe learned a little bit along the way. Have a great week!

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