The Joy of Embroidered Quilts
I’ve been thinking a lot about making quilts lately. Specifically about different types of quilts and the ways they are finished. Every quilter has their own set of techniques, and those who do embroidery quilting add their own unique style as well.
As a quilt “purist” I never used to like embroidered quilts. They all looked the same to me; puffy and store-bought. In recent years, though, I have really fallen in love with quilt embroidery. Tone on tone scrollwork or delicate and colorful florals add a special touch to a quilt that regular old patchwork or appliqué just can’t match.
Because my opinion has changed, I wanted to understand why. So, while doing my chores or piecing patchwork seams, I thought about it. Following a good bout of online window shopping for embroidery designs, I realized what it was.
Embroidered quilts just usually don’t have enough final quilting on them, giving them the look of department store comforters. After all the work that goes into them, this is a horrible way for someone to view them! While I could appreciate the work and vision that the stitcher had, I was just never impressed with the final quilt.
Then, I began seeing all these beautiful quilts that had embroidery as the main design element. It just finally clicked in my head why I loved these ones; they had plenty of quilting stitches to finish off the quilt!
After much confusion in my mind, I came to the conclusion that not all stitchers who make quilts are actually quilters! Wow! Once I understood this, though, it became easy for me to tell the difference between the embroidered quilts I love and the ones I don’t. The ones I don’t like have an embroidery design in the middle of the block and are quilted in-the-ditch, which doesn’t really show up. All the space of the block is completely devoid of quilting, so it puffs up like a comforter does. Not only is this unattractive, but it is the worst way to stabilize both the quilt and the precious embroidery!
The ones I love have embroidery in the center of the block, like usual. However, they also include non-embroidered quilting stitches all over the open spaces of the block and quilt, which adds a wonderful texture and visual appeal. It also keeps the quilts layers together securely and keeps the embroidery design from puffing up in the center. Beautiful!
There are also many embroidery quilting designs out there that are meant to simulate the final quilting stitches. Because we can have the embroidery machine stitch these for us, it makes it quite simple to add beautiful, intricate quilting to our quilts with a minimum of fuss. An embroidered quilt embellished with quilt embroidery is absolutely stunning! Even though I do long-arm quilting on a giant machine and frame, I love the ease and simplicity of allowing my embroidery machine to do this step for me. Instead of getting an aerobic workout moving the quilting machine around, I can sit and have a cup of coffee and watch the magic as the embroidery design gets quilted into my project.
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