On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 17:04:04 GMT, "Charlotte Hippen"
wrote:

At first it may not seem on topic but bear with me please.

Last night I pulled out one of my many cross stitch project after many
months of not working on any of them. It's a Precious Moments design by
Gloria and Pat. Over the years I have made several of their designs. I
started cross stitching as a kid so since I really liked the precious
moments these patterns were perfect. Now I stitch them when I want a fairly
fast and easy project to stitch so I've gotten a small collection of them
over the years. When I was younger my mother made the suggestion of make
enough to make a quilt with and I thought yea. I hadn't put much thought
into it until last night stitching. I am thinking about making small frames
of fabric for some of the smaller ones and maybe even a very small one for
the larger designs but haven't decided on that it may just end up being some
plain muslin to make them all the same size even though they are close. I
am thinking of attaching them together with sashings. I have a couple of
questions on how to accomplish this quilt though.

1)They are all stitched on aida (cloth with holes in it for those who don't
cross stitch). I assume I will need to put something behind them like
muslin to keep the batting from popping through. Will this be too bulky
especially since the aida is thick to begin with? Will I have cosmetic
problems due to the differences in bulk?

Yes attach backing to the aida because it will look better. I think I
would cut the backing pieces as large as you need to make all the
cross stitch pieces the same quilt block size, and applique (by hand
or machine) the cross stitched pieces onto the backing pieces. It
would add less bulk that way.

2)Like I said, I'm thinking about connecting the pieces with sashings so
some quilting can be done there, but I'm wondering what to do with the
blocks/pictures. I don't want quilting in the middle of my cross stitches.
Any ideas how this could be handled? I'm sure it will have to be machine
quilted because the bulk of the aida would make hand quilting a bit hard.

Again TIA for your help and ideas!!

IIRC the designs have a lot of open background area. You can quilt
around the outer edge of each individual element in the design. Not
over any backstitching that defines the edge of the stitched areas,
but about an eighth or a quarter inch away from the stitching. In any
largish unstitched areas of each block you can take an element from
the stitching (like a flower shape) and cut a template to use to quilt
that shape in the unstitched area. This will make the stitched
design stand out and it will be enough to prevent the batting from
shifting inside the block area.

I doubt the thickness of the aida would cause any real problems for
hand quilting as the batting is bulkier than the aida. And since you
will be quilting with a sharp needle instead of the blunt tapestry
needle you cross stitched with, you will find the sharp has no problem
piercing the fabric. You could try to use the holes in the aida to
quilt, but I think it would be harder to do that than to just ignore
the holes and stitch through it as if it were any other fabric.

HTH
Debra in VA