Hand quilting with a Big Stitch

Its been quite a few years since I hand quilted a quilt.  I can't even guess, but it has to have been 20 years at least!  At that time, all of the hand stitching was heirloom, which was with heavy waxed thread, small sharp needles, and 10-12 stitches per inch.  Those quilts were all hand basted together with long basting stitches that were taken out as the quilting was done.  

Modern quilts are hand stitched with heavy threads too - 12 weight is very popular and many companies are now supplying it in lots of colors.   I've been collecting some here and there and decided to try hand quilting again.  But this time, and on trend, is making big stitches with the heavy thread.  Not the tiny stitches of days gone by, and not basting stitches either.  

I picked the recent pallet cleanser to give it a try.  Probably not the best one as there are thousands of seam allowances to go through.   The threads I used are shown in the photo below.

The green ones are cotton spagetti from WonderFil in 12 wt and the navy blue is Sashiko from Japan.  The Sashiko is a 6 strand cotton thread that I separated into 3 strands that appears to be about 12 wt when separated.  I waxed both threads with Thread Magic and have been using a large eyed Sashiko needle. 

The big stitches are easy to make, but I find that I can only load one stitch at a time and still be able to pull the needle through the fabric and batting layers.  Below, I'm showing how the green shows up on the pieced fabric.  And how the navy looks against the blue. Unfortunately, the white batting is getting pulled to the top and shows up on the navy fabric.

In the picture below, I'm showing the backing side of the quilt.  I'm working on getting the stitches even on both sides.

I hope you like it so far!