Hand Quilted Bars Quilt

I first shared the top of my Bars quilt back in September, and am happy to show the finished quilt today as part of the November Aurifil Artisan challenge. This month’s theme was hand quilting.

I’ve done a bit of hand quilting here and there, but had never tackled anything this large. I spent a few days doing “research” before diving in. My quilty friend Heather gave me a lot of good advice, and I also found this video from Suzy Quilts and this video with Sarah Fielke to be quite helpful.

In my previous hand quilting projects, I’ve used 2-3 strands of embroidery thread or #8 perle cotton. But after spending time this year learning about and playing with different thread weights, I was excited to try Aurifil’s 12 wt cotton thread for this project…and spoiler alert — it was great! It’s a bit thinner than embroidery floss or #8 perle cotton, and I found that made the quilting process easier. But it’s still thick enough that my stitches are clearly visible, adding the graphic element and texture that I was looking for with this quilt.

I also used a new-to-me backing fabric on this quilt! I’ve been working from my stash as much as possible lately, and had quite a bit of this blue and white cotton voile fabric that I bought 4-5 years ago. I had planned to use it for curtains in my daughter’s room, but never got around to that project. It felt so soft and silky that I thought it would feel lovely as a quilt backing, so I went for it! It’s a bit more slippery than normal quilting cotton, but I made sure to baste the quilt very well and didn’t have any issues.

After finishing the quilting, I figured I might as well try big stitch binding too — in for a penny, in for a pound, right? For this, I found tutorials from Shannon Fraser and Patchwork and Poodle that got me started. Instead of first attaching the binding to the front of the quilt as I usually do, this time I started by machine stitching the binding to the back. That allowed me to fold it over to the front of the quilt so that my binding stitches were visible on the front.

I really love the result and it flows so well with the hand quilting I had already done. That said, I’m not sure how often I’ll use this technique again. There are 5 layers along the edge — binding (2 layers) plus quilt top, batting, and backing — and I found it pretty challenging to catch the first 4 layers but NOT the backing. Something about the angle of the needle, or perhaps the light weight of my voile backing? Whatever it was, I had to constantly (like every other stitch) check to make sure I wasn’t accidentally stitching through the backing.

Making this quilt was such an enjoyable experience from start to finish. Tara Faughnan’s Color Interactions class drove me to combine colors in new and exciting ways that I might not have otherwise tried, and Aurifil’s challenge motivated me to slow down and take the time to do the hand quilting and turn this into a quilt I’ll love for years to come.

The stats:

• Quilt measures ~53″ x 60″.
• Pattern is Bars Quilt by Tara Faughnan. I began this quilt top during Tara’s Color Interactions virtual class in September 2020.
• Fabrics are a variety of solids from my stash! Mostly Kona Cotton and Moda Bella, but there’s probably a few Michael Miller and Art Gallery solids in there as well.
• Backing is cotton voile.
• Hand quilted with 12 wt thread in sea biscuit (#6722) and brass (#2975).
• Binding is Kona Cotton on Nightfall, machine stitched to the back and hand stitched on the front with 12 wt Aurifil thread in brass (#2975).