Needle, thread, we're off!

   I've just spent Christmas with my family and I've spent it quilting – two activities which aren't usually synonomous. For most of us quilting entails closeting ourselves away and for those of you who use the dining-room table, Christmas is one of the few weeks when you gracefully concede that its original use is for dining.

   No, I've spent the holidays with everyone else; me, my needle, my thread, my little scissors and my quilt. Eight days later I have almost finished quilting a single-bed sized quilt. I have finally nailed it and got the stitching right. I'm thrilled with the results, and even more pleased that I achieved this during a holiday time when I usually hardly get anything done.

   I'll be honest, I can't machine quilt. I have machined lines of stitching through quilts but they have always been straight or with just a slight curve. Unfortunately back at the end of 2011 the pile of finished tops was becoming a bit too big, so I bought a pair of quilting gloves and vowed I would practice machine quilting almost everyday. The 'almost' was my downfall. I think I practised twice.

   Luckily that Christmas I bemoaned my predicament to two experienced quilters who politely heard me out and then said "But you don't have to machine quilt if you don't want to." And there it was, permission to ignore the gloves, the impossible task of fitting all that wadding and fabric through a tiny space, the tangled threads, the back ache and the frustration – I was free.

   I am still confounded as to why I needed this 'permission'. Why as a mature adult and an experienced piecer did I feel that I had to be able to machine quilt?

   Once you decide to go the route of big stitch quilting, similar quilts and even tied quilts begin to quietly pop up in articles and books. You just have to keep an eye out for them. Really there are lots of people doing them. There among the quilts with beautiful tiny hand-quilting are those whose stitches are larger and a little bit more flamboyant.

   This is what I'm doing – no frame, no hoop, just the quilt in your lap. I've even given up on marking the lines. All of us intuitively know a quarter of an inch space and the seam lines in the piecing are the grid to base your design on. You can change colours and threads as you wish. On this recent quilt I've been using number 5 pearl cotton and a huge needle. You quickly find a rhythm and the needle dictates the size of the stitches if you allow it to. I will admit that after the first day the side of my thumb was excrutiatingly painful.

   One of the nicest things about quilting this way is the contact with your material. I've been wondering why we choose quilt making over other forms of creativity and expression and I've decided that it must be the fabrics. However, we normally  select fabrics quite quickly, take them home and put them into the stash, cut them up and piece them. After the initial choosing we very much take them for granted and keep them at arm's length.

   Sitting over the course of a week, methodically stitching through the squares of fabric I have made emotional connections with all those small squares: there's a fine corduroy which is soft and the needle glides through, there's a black print through which I have to tug the needle and it still gets stuck, and there's a row of squares with a pink and turquoise print which make me smile everytime I sew through it.

   At the end of each day I fold the quilt and the golden lines of stitching amongst the basting are more numerous, and there's a deep sense of achieving something beautiful. It hasn't taken that long to quilt, eight days, and I haven't been stitching all the time. But these eight days I have also spent with everyone else, not on my own. Big stitch quilting takes a little bit of initial courage. It's a step into the dark. I often take out the first few lines of stitching, but every quilt is getting better and more surprisingly being stitched more. The first quilt was a lesson in minimalism whereas this quilt has lines running all over the place, and there's the added bonus of a wholecloth quilt on the back.

   So in the spirit of a New Year raise a glass to big stitch quilting – but remember to put your glass down a long way away from your quilt.