Notes on QTD quilts

I laughed myself silly over the QTD post by Judy in Ohio. Quilters may not realize (surely they would if they had once thought about it) that two strands of thread are thicker (heavier) than a single strand. Hand quilting uses a single strand of thread. Machine quilting uses two. Even if the HQing thread is a bit heavier, a single line of HQing still leaves a softer feel than a single line of MQing. For one thing, in MQ the two strands cross over each other every stitch, creating a "mini-knot" so to speak. This mini-knot adds to the heavier feel. Think of it this way....if you were using heavy rope to quilt with, a single strand of rope would be less heavy than two ropes. And then, if you cross the two ropes over each other, think of how bulky the crossover is. That's a clumsy illustration but it works to illustrate my point.

Hand quilting, even if dense, leaves a quilt softer than machine quilting, even if the machine quilting is done with fine threads.

JudyPete