Yes Nana, I feel hand quilting will become an art written about in history books very soon. Like you, I attended a quilt show and only found 2 handquilts, of course they had a prize ribbon on them. It leaves a person with a sad feeling to think people don't make time or want to have hobbies anymore.

We are entering a new generation of quilters that work, raise children and are involved in many things on weekends so their time needs to be well planned to enjoy a hobby. If you look in quilt magazines, you will see most new patterns are basically squares and rectangles so they can be put together fast and then machine quilted. There is certainly nothing wrong with this and it must bring satisfaction and a feel of accomplishment to those making them or they wouldn't continue to be in books.

We are also seeing the longarm companies designing machines and frames suitable to the home quilter who just wants to do their own quilts. If I had the space, I would be interested in one.

I will continue to hand quilt as long as I can but once all the family have quilts, what do you do with them? I give many to charity and I would prefer to machine quilt them so they would be more durable.

A great question Nana and I know there will be many comments.
Jeane

I have to get in on this one since I do hand quilting. I take pride in my nice, neat, even stitches but I have a feeling that this is pretty much overlooked by most people or if it is noticed, a lot of them probably think we are all nuts. It's true, people don't have hours and hours to devote to it and I do understand. Even though I'm not working right now (but wish I were) I remember how it was to work, have a family and try to find ANY time for myself on such things. So I do it for my own enjoyment and if someone notices it then that's gravy. When I started on the quilt I just finished for DH, he happened to take a second look at it and remarked "you've done all this by hand?" he had this incredulous look on his face and just walked away shaking his head. It may be a dying art, but the machine-quilted ones are beautiful and if that's all people have time for I support it. And when I really think about it, when the women back before sewing machines did it, I'm sure that if someone had told them that there was a machine that could do the same thing in about 100th the time, they would have jumped on it quick, because they did it out of necessity and probably not so much because they needed a hobby.

Shows are fun, but there's more to the quilting community than corporate sponsored shows. Hand quilted work doesn't always compare well to machine quilted work, apples to apples, because people get used to all the intricate, dense machine quilting a long arm can do. Even a skilled hand quilted work can look sparse by comparison and fewer hand quilter's will enter shows when the ribbons go to machines.

I'll say now that when I look at a quilt and see it's machine quilted I'm always disappointed. The quilt may be lovely and the long arm work may be stunning, it just doesn't grab my heart the way the simplest beginner's hand quilting does. It's like choosing between a painting and a photograph--one I consider art, and the other can be snapped by my cat if he steps on the phone just right.

Hand quilting is becoming a lost art. When was the last time your local quilt shop offered a class on hand-quilting? I've never seen one. I'm a self-taught handquilter and am pretty good at it, but my own quilts are machine quilted. It's a time factor, and I must admit that I really enjoy machine quilting on my treadle.

When I first started quilting, I pieced by machine and handquilted. I loved it and there were a few baby quilts I did an all over pattern....vines with hearts for leaves. Since that time, my hands have gotten arthritis and I very rarely handquilt. In fact, even applique is a strain at times. So, sometimes there's no choice but to use the machine.

I do think at shows, that hand quilting should not be judged in the same category as machine quilting.

SharonG/FL

I machine quilt more then I hand quilt these days but when I want it to be special I still hand quilt. I like to do it but it limits the quanity that one turns out, machines are faster. I believe that there is still a core of people that will hand quilt but nothing stays the same. Look how long it took for quilting to come back into vogue and now it is a whole new world. Jayne

I have to admit that I don't have a particular love for hand quilted quilts. If it makes you feel good to do it, like my hand appliqudoes for me, then of course it's a wonderful thing to do. But it doesn't enhance the value of a quilt for me. I don't see hand quilting as better or worse than machine; its just a different method. I have always believe that if my great grandmother had electricity and a machine, she would have used it! Time was important to her and she had a farm to run so she would have done whatever worked.

Kate

I realize that machine quilting is much faster and easier for those with arthritis etc. I am not dishing machine quilting...but would still like to see hand quilting possibly in a category by itself. I have a quilt shop here that still teaches hand quilting techniques...
Please don't take my question to heart...I was just wondering how others felt.

We have a small quilt show at our local festival every year and we have a separate class for hand quilted or machine quilted. Also a class for quilts made by a male as we have 2 men who enter quilts. and usually one of them wins the fan favorite. That said, I do both, but mainly hand quilting, especially in the winter when you can wrap up in it while you work.

IMHO........
Hand quilting is an art. Machine quilting is a craft.
Do you think that machine quilting is so popular because of that need for instant gratification we got from watching TV shows so much? End this story and move on to the next? I don't know but it sure sounds logical.

Hand quilting is certainly not being lost. I live in Amish country. Anybody who can get their hands on an Amish quilt has one...at least one. They hang in the halls of hospitals here! I love going place to place looking at the different styles of stitching. Some are amazing and some are okay.
There's one lady I admire a lot. She's managed a stitch that shows as a tiny dot....on both sides!!!!! Their work is detailed. None of that in-the-ditch lazy stuff. No type of lazy stuff whatsoever!
Do you honestly think we English are busier than your typical Amish women? Amish women don't have time to watch TV.
Bon
:)

PS...before I get myself in trouble(again)here. In this area if you're not Amish then you're English and that's that.

I don't believe it is a lost art, but more hand quilters don't feel they can compete with machine quilters at shows. I prefer the look of hand quilting, but cannot manage to do it well myself. Quilts I give away are all machine pieced and quilted because I'm better at it.

beverly

Bonica--I'm sorry but I have to say that I take some offense at the idea that machine quilting is not an art. I've seen some pretty awful hand-quilting and I've seen some amazing machine quilting. And speaking as someone who does both, and fairly well, I will tell you that machine quilting is not the easier choice. It's faster, but there's a pretty steep learning curve for most students. They are both techniques that require many, many hours of practice to do well.

My experience with teaching both techniques is that out of any four students, one will take to it like a duck to water, two will achieve success after many hours of practice, and the last will never be able to do it skillfully. Both techniques are crafts that in the hands of the truly gifted become art.

If I could quilt on a machine like Annie does...I'd probably never thread another needle for a quilt-making project. But, I can't. So, if I want something other than a utilitarian quilt it's going on a frame.

I have a friend who enjoys the hand-quilting process more than the piecing of the top. She finds it relaxing and therapeutic. I enjoy the piecing and consider the quilting a necessary evil.

Either method has the potential to produce a piece of art, and being a folk art/craft either method is legitimate. To me, the finished look of a quilt is impacted by whether it's machine or hand stitched. I prefer the look of hand stitching, but it's nothing more than a personal preference. When you start feeling obliged to do a personal project one way or the other because it's the way it is 'supposed' to be done........it has stopped being a folk art/craft.

If it takes making a special category to keep hand quilting a viable art then I'm all for it. I live in a rural area and people gathering together to quilt is a social event here. So, I see it continuing as long as new blood can be drawn into the process. That's the part of it I would like preserved, because that part of it is historical and worth saving.

Calliope, i can't agree with you more...machine quilting has its place but there is still nothing like a hand quilted piece that has been done with love and time...there are no hard set rules... it is all up to the individual person's preference. Bonica, I come from an Old Order Mennonite family where as a child, we were taught to sew and quilt at an early age...no TV's or Videos to take up our time...housecleaning chores were done then on to the stitching...stopped in time to prepare meals and then back to it...especially in the wintertime when there wasn't much else to do.

Ran across this library book:
Quilt & Embellish in one Step! by Linda Potter....

I love redwork, but not so much embellishment...anyway, during her trial and error period she even used Perle cotton thread by hand to quilt...yikes! I probally won't ever impliment her ideas, but it was a fun read when I couldn't sleep...

Gwen

Okay, everyone, I'm stepping up on my soapbox now, and I really admire the courage it took to ask this question. Why? Because it seems we all have an opinion on the subject, and not many of us are in the middle. We either LOVE or HATE whichever technique we do/don't prefer.

That being said, I can appreciate well-done machine quilting, but my preference is for hand-quilting, and I mean real hand quilting. NOT the stuff that is being sold as "real" quilting that is just done with the cheapest thread you can find and was thrown together with only the thinnest of battings by a sweatshop worker in Bangladesh (or wherever) for purposes of getting an inexpensive quilt on someone's bed. To me, that is NOT quilting, only a lousy facsimile thereof.

Hand quilting IS an art, especially when well-done. It is something that takes time and consistent practice to achieve the finest of skills. It is more than just tiny stitches, it is also knowing how to lay out a design, what works best with the piecing, etc. That part is also true for machine quilting, which can be an art in its own right when well-done. (Don't believe me? Check out this link to the quilt "Bella" by Linda McCuean, who won $100,000.00 for her efforts. It is stunning and worthy of the prize.)

The difference between the two is merely semantics. Harriet Hargrave, who has written a number of books on heirloom machine quilting, says she doesn't machine quilt but "hand quilts with an electric needle." And if you have ever seen her work, it is quite lovely.

I think that those of us (myself included) who love to hand quilt need to keep this art form alive. We need to enter our pieces in shows to let people know that this skill is NOT dead, but let's face it: because machine quilting can be accomplished much more quickly than a single individual hand-quilting a piece, there is more machine quilting to put in a show.

Time was when all quilts were pieced by hand, quilted by hand, bound by hand. The beauty is that it took many hours to accomplish, and when done well, it is a masterpiece. But if our foremothers would have had access to electric/treadle machines, they would have used them, too, so there is no right or wrong way of thinking here. Just don't put hand and machine side-by-side for judging, because they are two different skills used to accomplish the same task with very different appearances.

If I were a judge, I'd select a well-done hand quilt over a well-done machine quilt any day, but that's just me ... maybe that's why I'm not ever asked to be a judge....

So, in answer to your question, hand quilting is not "lost", just currently "misplaced" and we need to find it, pull it out, and display it proudly for all to see and be amazed by it!

Okay, who needs my soapbox now???

Odessa

Here is a link that might be useful: Closeup of Bella machine work

This is an interesting discussion ~
I also live around the Amish area and just love the look of a hand quilted piece. It does take more time to do, and it sure makes a piece very special. I hand quilt anything I give to someone as gifts (if I have enough time to do this), but will do machine quilting when I am in a hurry to finish something ~ such as for charity etc. Handquilting does take a lot of time, but the enjoyment of the finished piece to look at is wonderful. At times I feel that hand quilting is slowly dying out, as people do not seem to want to take the amount of time to do hand a piece. Machine quilting, if done well is also one to be appreciated. Since it can be done fast, maybe those selling the articles can make $$ much faster on their pieces. Is it any better, guess it depends on what you like.

I am not excited about anything that I have machined quilted, and have tried many times to get it looking good. I give tons of credit to those who do it well.

In our area, if a piece is hand and has machine quilting in any part for a show -- it is placed in a machine catagory. I also think there needs to be more division on catagories for shows.

Speaking as quilt show coordinator, I absolutely agree that for judging purposes, hand quilted and machine quilted projects need to be judged separately and they always were in my shows. I personally also had separate categories for "self-quilted" and "custom-quilted", since many (not all, but many) machine quilted projects are being done by professionals like myself, who are paid to quilt the project. I don't believe that it's fair to the self-quilter, whether hand or machine quilting, to be put in competition against a professional quilter. Just my take on the subject.

I will tell you this, if I wanted to enter a show with a view to winning a prize, I'd definitely enter the hand quilting classes, because there is simply so much less competition in them! Fewer quilts means you have a better chance of winning.

I had brought up this subject a few years back when Fons and Porter had baby quilt contest and the 3 winners were all machine quilted. The one hand quilted was gorgeous.
When I first started quilting, machine quilting was not allowed in competitions. Maybe that was just my area.
I love hand quilted items but I will not put that much time into a baby or charity quilt.
I have seen some amazing machine quilting. I love feathers and they can be machine quilted so fast by someone that knows what they are doing.
I have hand quilted for many years and just recently started machine quilting.
They both require different skill sets and IMO should have different divisions. I think both have a place in the quilting arena. I also think hand quilted items are not valued as highly as they were before. I saw a show and there was a gorgeous machine quilted item, the quilter was asked how much time it took her, she replied 3 months and 69 spools of bobbin. Hand quilting is cheaper by the thread lol!!!!!
I find hand quilting relaxing and I do not know one person around me that does it. In my area it is a dying art.
Even my 12 yo granddaughter said 'no way!' lol.
I also knit and crochet and that takes a lot of time too.
Rosa

"The Statler Stitcher® is a computer software program combined with hardware which will operate a longarm quilting machine and can stitch almost any design. A Gammill® machine equipped with Statler Stitcher® can handle an intricately patterned king-size quilt in a matter of hours instead of days, and is guided by the computer instead of by hand. The system can determine the pattern size, block size, stitches per inch, repetitions of the pattern and the offset of the pattern."

If you have $30,000 to spare and room in your basement, you can have your very own quilt factory, and the glory will be a production run of one single factory quilt at a time. It will be perfectly easy to save your program and throw on quilt after whole cloth quilt--they will all turn out perfectly, and perfectly the same, at the great rate of two per day. It's an amazing machine--the "quilter" doesn't even have to stay in the room. Most factories call this person an operator. You may say you'd never churn out copies--but you COULD. Back to my painting analogy--is it original hand work, or is it limited edition print signed by the artist, or is it a paint by numbers kit?

Folk art follows a tradition in a craft. Generally, folk art can be done by...folks. Whatever is happening by professional long arm quilters with these expensive machines is VERY far from the heart and soul of a quilting tradition. My grandmother and great aunt were skilled factory workers at the Derby--now known as Fruit of the Loom. You can take the machine out of the factory but you can't take the factory out of the machine. They'd no more be proud of a machine quilt than of a pair underwear they bought at Wal-Mart. My mom sends out machine pieced quilts to be long armed--it's expedient, but she'd never call it the best.

The fact is, by law of supply and demand, with automatic machines churning out two quilts a day, those quilts will be less valued over the course of the years. People are smart, and all the art talk in the world doesn't change the value of reproducible work done in a few hours by automatic machine. The human element becomes entirely secondary to the machine. Some of these shows function mostly as a marketing tool for the industry, and indeed the whole shift to machine quilting was pushed along by big prizes awarded by businesses. It's very much in the interest of business to elevate the easiest. The easiest sells. BTW, lets all make a million pillowcases!!! Excuse me?

This, I think, is what kills machine quilting for me, and makes me reject it as art (not high art, not fine art, but folk art.) The end product of Gammill Statler Stitcher will be indistinguishable from any other machine quilt--except it will look very, very skilled and be entirely reproducible. I feel like my values have been slowly pushed too far, my standards slowly pulled aside and I feel myself backlashing. Suddenly, I look up and say "That's ridiculous."

I certainly don't mean to attack machine quilters, especially you, Annie. What you do is practically unique--find me another professional treadle quilter (yeah, I know there might be a few, but still, it's rare isn't it?) It's not black and white by any means, machine quilting has it's place, albeit with all these different categories and qualifiers. Hand quilted will always be a class alone for me, no explanations required because everybody understands a hand, a needle, and a thread.

WOW...when I asked this question...I didn't think I would get this much response. I have been given two of the quick fast store bought quilts..both of which I have had to take apart, repair the seams and then requilt. They just don't hold up. I am glad to see there are pros and cons to both machine and hand quilted pieces. Each has its place. Also glad to know there are still diehards to hand quilting...thanks for all the feedback.

I agree with damascusannie, in that machine quilting should certainly be considered and art just as hand quilting should be.

Personally, I enjoy both, but find machine quilting much harder a couple ways. One aspect of it for me that is difficult is a space issue. I have to put up a banquet table in my game room/office which takes up a lot of space. And second, I just think machine quilting is harder. It may be a combination of not having the ideal machine, but also, I just need more practice.

When I hand quilt, I can put up my small quilt frame right in my living room, and quilt any time.

BUT the only hard thing about hand quilting that discourages me is that it's really rough on my writs--didn't used to be but it's getting to be a challenge.

Anyway, I love and admire both methods equally--even the not so great hand work I've seen in stores. The only type of quilting that I really don't like at all, is the work that's done on a long arm machine, that you map out a design, thread the machine, turn it on, and let it rip. I've seen quilts quilted that way and they look so manufactured.

But I guess the end justifies the means, as long as people keep piecing and quilting!

Petalpatsy, most of us who machine quilt - even those of us with long-arm machines DO NOT have the computerized system. As you pointed out, they are very expensive, and that's on top of the very expensive long-arm system.

Most of us guide the machine or the fabric ourselves. That does take some artistry.

Hand-quilters often mark their quilts with the design, and then just follow the lines. How is that different from what machine quilters do? Often we don't mark anything, and quilt as the quilt speaks to us, fitting motifs into specific places.

Those that own the computer systems are in business, and need the high through-put per day in order to stay afloat in the business.

So there is a difference between hand-quilting, hand-guided machine quilting, and computer-guided machine quilting.

As I said before, I love the look of hand-quilted quilts. I'm just not married to the concept. I don't think one is better than the other.

There is indeed some artistry in choosing designs to machine quilt, and there is skill in operating the machine and handling the quilt under it.

I also live in Amish country. but the hand quilting they do is NOT quality. My "beginner"(only 5 years at it)stitches look 100 times better. A friend paid to have a quilt top quilted and its awful. The binding is a nightmare and looks so bad I offered to cut it off and replace it. Another friend traveled to Pennsylvania Amish country specifically to buy a hand quilted quilt. Price tags of $900 and up and she could tell they were not hand quilted! When she asked she was told they are quilted on a treadle machine and to them that is by hand! I was flabberghasted and so was she. She refused to pay that much for a quilt that was not hand quilted for real.

We are for sure The English, but I know fewer people who will try to cheat you in my community than in the Amish one!

J

Jackie,
That is interesting! I remember a documentary type show where some of the Amish quilts (area, don't remember exactly) actually came from places like Thailand.
The show had a small boy sitting in the door way of a shanty sewing a binding on.
Rosa

Here is a link that might be useful: Some Amish quilters

My grandmother gave me an unquilted pieced top, so I figured I better learn to quilt. I learned to quilt at a community college class at a high school. I learned to piece by hand and to quilt by hand. My first quilts (about 7) were all hand-pieced and hand quilted -- this took a lot of time!!! I go to quilt shows and am in awe of the machined quilts. I hope some of the younger generation will keep it alive, but am not too optimistic about that. I love to quilt by hand and the calmness it brings. Go figure -- I still have not quilted my grandmother's top.