Hand Quilting with the big Stitch - "Hip Surgery Recovery and World Series"

I kept working on the lap quilt with the big stitch quilting.  Although working in the slow mode while recovering from hip surgery kept me busy, I kept thinking that I could have machine quilted this quilt in a couple of days.  We were also watching all of the baseball playoff games and the World Series.  Well, it was worth the effort to make a new lap quilt for myself anyway.  

I'm not so sure that I will keep doing hand quilting with the big stitches.  In fact, I made every rookie mistake with this piece.  I chose the wrong batting for hand quilting, I chose blocks that had gobs of seams which made it really difficult to stitch through, I didn't baste it enough, resulting in huge tucks in the backing, I didn't start from the center and work myself towards the edges, etc.  

Oh, and the dog ate one whole ball of the blue thread that I bought in Hawaii!  I had only 35 inches left on the second ball when I was done!  Yes, this is really one of those times when The Dog really did eat it!

I'm not even sure that I can wash it because it has all kinds of materials in it, including ribbon, silk, painted color catchers, and an indeterminant rayon-like fabric.  After it was quilted, I added a bright lime green binding.

Here is the finished quilt.  It measures 48" w x 64" h.  I named it "Hip Surgery Recovery and World Series".  

I hope you like it, because I can't say that I do.  

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!