Cut Work Quilts Session 4: Quilting the Background

So I had finished stitching all of my flowers. And in this piece, I ended up with five of the large flowers and a lot of the small flowers all over the place, quite a few leaves, some stems. But I also had a lot of negative space, and that's these spaces in here. And I don't want that negative space to be poofy the way it is right now. So I'm going to go in there and stitch all of that with a small stipple. This is a very important step. If you don't do that, it starts to compete with your other things because it's sitting on the same surface or the same level of importance, if you will. And I'm definitely going to do this from the back, because from the front, you can barely see this black stitching. And so I'm definitely gonna continue stitching from the back. So that's what I'm going to do now is I'm going to come in here and everything that is background, I'm going to stitch with a little tiny stipple. And it doesn't really matter where I start because it's all already got stitching in it. When I get to an area that I can't get out of, I can either knot off or I can use a line I've already stitched to stitch over, which is what I'm going to do here. And get to an area where I can stitch some more. And so you can see what's happening here is that as I stitch this background, the things that are going to be in the foreground are actually coming up forward and getting closer to the surface. So our thread just broke, which is okay. We'll fix that in just a moment. But again, I want to show you what's happening. It's one of the cool things about the physics of quilting is that as we heavily quilt that background, it allows those areas with less quilting to pop forward and it's going to happen on both sides. And it's going to make the cutting a lot easier because it raises this surface up to the top. So I'm going to rethread. If you're one of those people who thinks that it's unusual for your threads to break when you're machine quilting, it's not. If you stitch too long in the same spot for very, very often your threads are going to break because you're stitching right through them. It's not a big deal. You just have to learn what to do when that happens. And basically what you're going to do is simply backtrack and stitch over those last few stitches that you did when they broke so that you knot that area off. And I'm not even going to bring my bobbin thread up because it's already got tension on it. I'm just going to double over there and keep stitching. So I'm way back over in this corner, and I want to come back over here. So instead of knotting off or anything, I'm just going to stitch along this edge that's going to be covered by my binding. And then I'll just pick up with my quilting again. So anytime I get myself in a nook or something like this that I don't have an escape route for, I'm simply going to double over on a stitch line that I already have, that allows me to go to the place where I can quilt. So again, I'm in a deep spot here, so I'm going to double over on the outside of this petal. So no matter what kind of quilting you're doing, anytime you feel like you can't get out of where you're at, you don't have to panic. You can either knot off and jump over and start again somewhere else, or you can double over. I believe the doubling over is almost always your best bet because every knot off that you make is a weakness. So I'm just going to double over and come over to this area and quilt. Okay. So now I'm deep in here and I want to be way over here. So this is where I am going to knot off, and then I'm going to travel over to where I want to go. So knotting off, I'm just going to stitch almost in place but moving the fabric ever so slightly, and I'm going to move over here and finish up the spine a little bit, and then we'll be ready to start some cutting. I believe we are out of bobbin. Okay. I'm just going to leave this little bit and take care of it later and concentrate now on doing some cut work. It is the, kind of most important part of this. If you've already, already know how to machine quilt, or you've already practiced a lot and you feel comfortable with it, then you're good to go with all this technique. It's going in there now and doing that cut work that's going to make all the difference. So we're going to talk about scissors and start cutting away in just a minute.