Big Stitch Hand Quilting | Lisa Bongean | Primitive Gatherings

Hey everyone, it's Lisa from Primitive Gatherings and today I am at my home and I get to talk to you about hand quilting. I don't want to put you off. I know that hand quilting you either love it or you don't want anything to do with it. But maybe just hang out for a little bit and see what's going on before you make a decision. All right, so in our February 2025 quilt box we have this design that we are featuring. I believe it's called Skipping Stones and it is going to be two charm packs and then you are going to have to pick a background. I picked this beautiful light gray. You are either going to have homespun charm packs or your few of you might have some flannel charm packs. So make sure you pick the corresponding background to go with whichever fabric you have. So also in that quilt box there's a few items that I'm going to be featuring and using today. So I'll talk about those as well. So you are going to get this beautiful ruler that we have made for you to do clamshells or orange peels. Now if you don't hand quilt this also could be used for machine quilting as well. So you would just mark it with this and go. So if you like to condition your thread we have these beeswax little tartlets here and you would just hold your thread on there and run it through and that will put a nice little coating on it. So that would help deter from knotting and maybe gliding your needle through the fabric easier with that. So that's all you would do to condition your thread is just run it lay it on top and just run it through there. It'll make a little groove in there but that's how you know you're getting it on there. Then we are going to put in a tube of big stitch. My needles always tell you what they are used for. So big stitch quilting needles and they come in a pack of 12. All right so those are the things that are going to be included in your subscription box. Now here are some other things that you're going to need to do hand quilting. I have this frame but you also could do it in a hoop but it is basted ahead of time and then put on this frame. I do have another video that we will link in the description so you can see how to go from making a quilt basting a quilt so it's kind of a whole little series on big stitch hand quilting from start to finish. So you will know how to baste or how I basted this quilt. I need a thimble so I just got a brand new one at Road to California so I'm super excited about this. This one is a beautiful little dragonfly handmade that I found at the show and we will be having her into our store one of these days. And then I also have the Roxanne thimble that I've had for many many years. I've been hand quilting for a lot of years. I really love it. There's nothing like sitting here watching what's going on out in the world and just you know putting some stitches in through the layers. It's really really really relaxing and really fun. Then I also need a nice little thread snips. I have that there and then I need a marking pen and for this one I chose this water soluble pen from Sewline. All right it's called Styla. It's the first time I use it. It's really good. Okay all right so let's just talk about marking first. I have all my needles right there. I have some already pre-threaded here. I kind of always do that so I can just pick up a few and go whenever I have any minute. So when you first start off there's a line on this ruler here. So this would be like the edge of your quilt when you first start off. You're going to start off with just a half of a orange peel there or half of a clam shell. That's how you would start on the bottom edge when you start marking. Obviously I'm in the middle of the quilt so I'll show you how it goes from here on out. All right so if you can see close up here I'm hoping I have a lot of this marked but this row up here I do not have marked so I left that. So all you do is you lay this out and then you take your marker and I already can tell like where the last ones were with this and I just mark. So once I mark that one then I just keep moving over and I'm just going to do the clam shells first. So I just center that like so and just keep going. All right so once I have the clam shell then I turn it the other way to make it into orange peels. And don't worry if your lines aren't perfect you'll be stitching and you can with your stitches make them go exactly where you want. So what I'm saying is if you have a bigger gap here you can make that connect to the next one very easily enough. And all these marks will wash away when the quilt is done. Okay so when it's time to stitch I'm just going to start here and I'm going to continuously just stitch all along these little pumpkin seeds or orange peels and continuous. So you can kind of see over here where I've just stitched all in one direction and then I have to go back and stitch the other direction. So that's kind of how I do it I kind of stitch one way and then I go back and stitch the other way back. All right so to stitch I'm going to put on my new thimble. I've got to keep breaking that in. I'm going to take one of my pieces of thread here and I'm going to put a knot in the end and I'm only going to do once around because I'm going to pull this knot into my fabric and bury it in between the layers. All right okay all right so if I want to stitch this line right here I'm going to insert a head and stitch up to that point where I want to come out. So right when I get to my knot I kind of hold it pull it through and then if my tail is a little bit longer I'll clip it a little bit but I want it to lie right in there and I'm going to try to hit it as I stitch. So then I anchor the eye of my needle onto my thimble and I adjust that first stitch and I my fingers underneath unfortunately you cannot see but they really are used to every time I push my needle in I poke my finger here so I know I'm through all the layers. So this hand will be working but unfortunately you don't get to see a lot of that but that's why it's really good to take a class so hopefully if you're interested in this you could take a class or we'll just keep working on video. So my underhand is pushing up right now I'm going to lay that needle back my hand in front makes this little ridge and then I push forward about a quarter of an inch and then I kind of relax my bottom hand and I come bringing this needle straight up and down again I push through the layers I'm through so then I come back up lay it back down and move it forward again so on big stitch you get to take about two or three stitches so I'll stitch a little bit more here so you can kind of see it and then I'll slow down and describe it again so sometimes you can get three on a needle gauge that first stitch rock it back through the layers push up now I use my thimble on my pointer finger a lot of people will use it on this one I just find it easier to grab with these two fingers than these two fingers and I did unthread my needle here so we'll get that threaded back up I prefer to thread all my needles in the morning don't try to do this at night all right so let me just continue to stitch pushing it forward and you back it up if it's too big rock it back and forth now do you see how my thumb is not on the needle everybody when they first start stitching is always wants to do this all right we don't we can't do this all right so the thimble is there for a reason you park that in there straight up and down like so and I'm just balancing this needle between my two fingers so I'm going to push up so I can lay it back make that ridge so see how this kind of forms a c around and that makes me a little ridge so I can push that through and make that stitch and whatever feels comfortable two or three and are my stitches perfect no they don't really have to be so I try to go for about a quarter of an inch or maybe a smidge less than a quarter but we're not taking tiny tiny stitches is what my what my theory is here we're doing bigger stitches it's called big stitch and when I'm done here I'll have Kaylee kind of pan over the stitches that I've already done oh through the seams it's a little tougher and then I want to just stitch long enough so you can see how I end and bury the tail I'm probably going to run out of thread here before I come to the end which is right there maybe it'll be one of those too close moments and I'm going to have to tie off early oh I think I can make it just barely all right one all right make that last final stitch and I'm just going to kind of just move away and then here I have just enough so this is like the least you can do to make a knot so I'm going to just go in here and make a loop and twist it on and make a knot now I'm going to pull this knot through my layers again and bury it in between the layers not out the back there we go and then I clip it nice and close and then that's how you do that all right so I hope you like this little introduction to hand quilting big stitch hand quilting it is and just give it a try maybe you might like it