Things are getting more and more eccentric at Casa de la Swain. Changing styles in my textile work, falling in love again with painting and photography...and then there is the ever illusive quest for continuing creativity through working with Eric Maisel. Still on the road teaching, posting now at the Ragged Cloth Cafe and taking the pledge to keep handmaiden up to date.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Just an Old-Fashioned Girl

Okay so I got side-tracked and didn't get the quilting pictures posted until tonight. Gotta admit Mel's close-ups are better than mine but that is an operator problem not a camera problem. Also thought I would share a few pictures from the week's work.
In defense of hand quilting, which is hard to defend I know these days with everyone machine quilting like crazy, there is a difference in the line created by hand quilting. Hand quilting produces a soft line. The line is soft because there are spaces between the stitches. Machine quilting produces a hard line (not a negative comment just a description of the line) because there are no spaces between the stitches.....each stitch is directly connected to the next.
When you are hand quilting you can adjust your tension to ease in areas that I call fluffy. You don't have that luxury with machine quilting, the tension is even or should be. Neither one is bad or good just different.
Last but not least to go all metaphysical on you....I feel closer to the work when it is in my hands not separated from me by the machine. I am giving part of my self to the work by having it in my energy field so closely. There is a Zen like quality to hand quilting (for me) that I don't have with machine quilting. Hand quilting is quiet, meditational and allows me to slow down in this fast paced world in which we live. It allows me to reconnect to myself and to the piece.
So Mel, my dearest friend in thin, this girl will just have to stay out of the 21st century.....maybe I should quilt by candle light.

2 comments:

Melody Johnson said...

And we all LOVE your hand quilting. I could never rise to the beauty of it, and your description is precisely the case, the soft line. And the ability to scquoosh the fabric ever so slightly. And the subtlety of it all. Sigh.

Gerrie said...

I love the look you have with the larger X stitches. I can not do hand quilting because of carpa tunnel, but I can do the larger embellishing hand quilting (I just discovered) and want to do more of it.

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