Quilt top Construction vs. Quilting
Pam asked:
Why do you do so many quilt tops and wait to quilt them later? I usually do a top and quilt it right away, but do you feel like you get more done this way?
I feel that design and construction of a quilt top requires a different set of skills than are needed to quilt them. I feel I work better if I stick with a single type of task for an extended period of time because I become more efficient the more I repeat a skill. There are things I learn that I want to remember, kind of like little “tricks”, as I do each process. I want to retain that information in my head from piece to piece.
For example, when I was piecing Structures #47, slowly some thoughts I had about how I had pieced a similar quilt last year came back to me. Unfortunately I first made the same mistakes over again before I remembered what I had learned, like cutting some lines too thin, or not getting angles the way I thought might look best. If I do several quilt tops in a row the information I have learned builds up and I make fewer mistakes, the result being, I think, that the work improves.
I suppose it is like muscle memory - we repeat the same motions over and over again and we get much more efficient but also skilled at doing them.
The second part of my answer is that I like the designing and construction more than I like the quilting. It’s not that I don’t like the quilting - I love it - I find it very meditative. But the piecing is what really energizes me.
I’m currently making a concerted effort to get many of the quilt tops pieced. I’ve completed 2 1/2 of them in since August 1. I very heavily stitch my quilts as I love the texture. So it is a very slow process - taking from 20-50 hours depending on the size of the quilt. I always think I should find a faster way of doing the quilting but I’m never happy with the results. I had hoped to get 4 quilts done a month but it looks like it will be closer to 3. The day job really cuts into my quilting time - but that is a topic for another day.
I’ll post some close up shots of the quilting later this weekend.
Posted by in: Making Abstract Contemporary Textile Art
Rayna said,
August 26, 2005 @ 7:48 pm
Yeccch - I leave the quilting till the very last minute, since I hate that part. But the thought of quilting more than one in succession drives me nuts. On the other hand, I always have several in design stages at the same time.
Interesting how we all work so differently.