seazteddy

I have a partialy finished quilt top, that was hand quilted but I am not a hand quilter, will it look strange if I use the machine to finish it?

Bree123

It would help if you could post a picture. In general, I would say it really depends on the existing quilting & what you plan to do with it.
If the hand stitches are really quite even, small & straight, it would make it much easier to combine with machine quilting.

I am working on a quilt now that I mostly machine quilted, but then wanted to add some additional micro-filler inside some of the applique designs . Because I am not especially skilled at quilting on less than a 3/4" scale and I had already added the baby rick-rack, it was not practical to machine quilt, so I hand quilted those areas. From a couple feet away, you can't tell the difference. Up close, they definitely don't look the same if you're trying to look for inconsistencies (plus, this was the first time I've ever hand quilted anything ... so there's that). Some of my hand stitches went slightly off-line. Some were crooked. And you will pretty much always have wider spacing between stitches with hand quilting vs. machine quilting.

Nevertheless, unless the hand quilting was really sub-par or just way, way better than what I could do on a machine, I would probably just go ahead and FMQ the rest of it if it were for my family. "Done is better than perfect", as the saying goes.

Kwiltr

I made a quilt with the intention of hand quilting it entirely for my daughter. I made the mistake of using bamboo batting which ended up too dense for hand quilting and after many months in, decided there was no way it was going to get done entirely by hand. So to finish it, I used my machine. I cross hatched the quilt by machine with monopoly thread on top and the matching (matched to my hand quilting) cotton thread on the bobbin, around what I had hand quilted. Then finished up the borders with the matching cotton thread. As Bree123 says, done is better than perfect. Here's a picture of my finished quilt. Certainly non-traditional in almost every way, but it's the style she wanted.

ckcowl

I have a couple quilts that contain both hand and machine quilting. They are lovely. As long as the quilting compliments... ( one of mine has hand quilting around appliques, in blocks, the machine quilting is a cross hatch. It is beautiful! The other one has lovely hand quilting in the blocks and machine quilted feathers in the sashing/borders, it too is beautiful

Quilt30

I believe Anita Shakelford wrote a book about combining hand and machine quilting.

QuiltingHaven

I hand quilt and machine quilt on my quilts all the time. Sometimes I want hand quilting around stars or flowers and stitch on the machine in outline or in the ditch. Also, I machine sew the binding on and hand stitch them to complete the binding. I, also, have hand quilted at least 3 quilts and the same on the baby quilts. I can hand quilt sitting by the DH in the evening and love doing it. It is your quilt, quilt it the way that you want to!!! Also, I have a great long-arm quilter that I use when I have a quilt that needs just a different way of quilting....she does beautiful work. Besides, I am never bored with quilting!!!!! Love it.

ManiacQuilter2

I had a friend who wanted me to finish up quilting an Irish Chain quilt but when I saw how little quilting needed to be done, I just finished hand quilting it for her.

seazteddy

Thanks, I will take a pix of the stitching and if you could tell what stitch length I should use for the machine.

nanna-up-north

I've mixed hand and machine quilting before. I did stitch-in-the-ditch on all the blocks by machine and then hand stitched a design inside each block. It looks just fine.

If half the quilt is machine quilted and the other half is hand quilted... I think that would look too obvious for me. But if the goal is to get it finished.... so be it.

Whatever you choose only matters to you if it's your quilt.