February 19, 2014

Tacking a Quilt

February 19, 2014

Traditionally quilts are made of a top, which is usually the pieced, attractive part of the quilt; the backing which can be pieced, but is usually a solid piece of fabric; and the batting which goes between the front and the back to add warmth and puffiness.  Then the three layers are held in place by running stitches which can be in any design or pattern.  They serve to keep the quilt together, but also as a decorative addition to the quilt top.  Over the 30 years that I have been quilting, I have made several quilts in that manner, sometimes creating my own designs for the quilt stitches to enhance the particular square.  It is slow, tedious work.  I no longer have the hand strength or the time and patience to do my quilts that way.

Sometimes I hire a lady in our quilt group who loves to do that hand quilting, to finish the tops that I make by adding her beautiful, creative stitching.  Sometimes if it is a small quilt like a baby quilt, I will do that quilting on my sewing machine.  I am not very good at that yet.  So my alternative is what is called tacking.  On my sewing machine I have a stitch for that purpose; it secures the quilt with a back and forth stitch - not a normal ziz-zag, but this takes 3 very tiny stitches as it goes across and 3 as it comes back, all in a very tiny spot.  More commonly, the end result might be called a comforter, instead of a quilt.  When I was growing up I had a purple satin comforter on my bed, but it was one piece of fabric on the front and one on the back.  So I call what I make and tack, a quilt.  If you want to call it a comforter, I won't be offended.

In this quilt I tacked each square in the corners, in the middle, and 1/2 way between each corner, along the sides.  So this morning I stayed home and tacked the quilt that I am currently working on.  When a quilt is tacked in this manner, there are threads running between each tack that later must be trimmed.  Tonight I watched some Olympic skiing, and ice skating while I trimmed all those threads on the front and on the back.

Now I have cut the binding.  I still need to piece it and sew it onto the edges of the quilt.  That is tomorrow morning's task.

I went to the office around lunch time and Ron went out on a couple of jobs.  He had to make a couple of trips, so it took a while.  I spent the afternoon going through mail and paying bills and filing things.  I did a little bookkeeping and waited on customers. 

A couple of days ago I realized that most of the time I leave my remote for the Cochlear Implant set on the "noise" setting.  That setting takes down the background noise and can help a lot in noisy settings.  I am not sure if there is a problem leaving it always on that setting although there probably is.  Today I changed it to what they call "normal" setting.  It worked fine all day at the office, but when I walked in the back door at home this evening, it was so noisy in the house.  Later when Ron came in I asked if the A/C and the refrigerator were always that noisy.  He said yes they were.  I had been enjoying the "noise" setting that brought those "noises" way down.  I probably need to get used to those noises, but they sure are...noisy.