nursie76

What a wonderful legacy! Your grandmother will live on and be refreshed in you mind every time you look at the quilt. How you must have loved this special lady!

I definitely think she had started to quilt it by hand. The stitches, while rather large, are very even, and I know that I was told that while the size is important, it is how even they are that is most important. If you continue as your grandmother started you will have a beautiful heirloom with a rustic, charming look.

Barb_MO

I hope you will be able to finish this by hand quilting. I would stay with the 1/4 in from both seam lines as she was doing. I wouldn't worry about trying to match her stitch length exactly. all beginner hand quilters do get better as they go along, you may find by the time you are finished you have mastered very tiny stitches. You will also have in the quilt lable that your grandmother started the quilting and it was finished by you, so that will explain the difference in the stitching.
Good luck to you, I am sure you mother is going to love you very much for doing this.

nellebelles

I think it is in the quilting phase too. A question I have--with the quilt, was the thread she was using passed along too? It would be great to use the exact same thread as she started the quilting with, so that it would match exactly. And how very special that you get to hold the very same needle she held in her hand too...
How blessed you are to have this piece of personal history from your great-grandmother's life!

Jim's Gem

What a wonderful treasure you have there!! As far as I know, no one in my family has quilted before me.
I think it is wonderful that you want to finish this for her.
I am sorry that you lost her in such a horrible way.

Welcome to the board from Southern California.

Moonpi

Since it was pinned, I would call it quilting stitches. If that frame has been in the same spot for five years, chances are that the edges are going to be stretched out of whack. You may want to lay out flat and spritz with water when you remove the frame, and let it relax before quilting adjacent areas.

I was taught to hand quilt from the center out, so spots that are not perfect can be cheated in more easily.

Tiffany

Okay, reading back through, I can see where those are most likely her quilting stitches. I assumed they were basting stitches simply because they seem rather far apart to me. However, after reading Prism's explanation of how to count the stitches per inch (I didn't realize we counted the stitches on the back too) it seems I quilt 12-15 stitches per inch. Here I thought I was doing 8-9 stitches and I keep trying to get my stitches smaller. :roll:

I love the idea of quilting a 4 leaf clover or honeybee on it. The only thing to remember when quilting a circle instead of a straight line is that you can only pile on 3 or less stitches onto the needle in order to keep the integrity of the circle. Otherwise you end up with a straight line and your circle comes out a bit strange looking. Yep, experience talking here. Lol.

Moonpi, excellent suggestion about spritzing it with water and letting it dry if it is stretched out of shape.

alaskasunshine

It looks like she was quilting to me. This might sound crazy but I would probably use a different color to finish so your mom will know where her mom's stitches are and where ours begins. I think that would be sort of neat to do. What a heartwarming quilt!

billswife99

[quote=Prism99]

Quilting stitches are counted both top and bottom so, if you are seeing 4 stitches on top per inch, then that would be counted as 8 stitches per inch -- pretty standard for beginning quilters and very acceptable for a utility quilt or charity quilt. Experienced hand quilters strive for 12 stitches per inch. Most likely she was planning to quilt inside every square; however, the most efficient way to do this is to quilt in straight lines -- first one way, then another.

Woo Hoo! I just doubled my stitches per inches!!!

:mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Barb_MO

No wonder I was never able to achieve 12 stitches to the inch...I always counted just the top stitch. I didn't think a stitch was complete until you come up to the front.
Now, I'm going to look at some of my hand quilting and count my stitches and see how I did.

Tiffany

Okay, so now that we know we count the top and bottom stitches, I'd love to know how many stitches per inch you ladies are quilting.