Big Ocean Sew Along Week 7 - Final Week!: Quilting and Finishing Our Big Ocean Quilt

Welcome to Week 7 of the Big Ocean Sew Along, our final week! Now that we have a quilt top put together, we need to decide how to finish it. This week I’ll share with you my process for deciding how to quilt each of the Big Ocean quilts I’ve made, and give you some tips for quilting yours. Be sure to join us tonight at 4pm on Zoom at the Big Ocean Sew Along Wrap Up Party! We’ll show off our quilt tops and other progress, and troubleshoot quilting plans if anyone needs help! 

There are so many options for quilting your Big Ocean quilt. I love how hand quilting looks, so I will probably be hand quilting my niece’s Big Ocean baby quilt. Truth though, I've run out of time and haven't basted the quilt, but I have a deadline of mid November so I can give it to her for her birthday!!  My favorite threads are Wonderfil, and I carry them over in my shop. I usually use a 12wt thread to give my quilts a pop of color and texture. One thing I like about Wonderfil thread is that it has visual impact, but it is still light enough to pull through the quilt easily. 

Hand quilting can be used in so many ways. You can quilt your entire quilt by hand, or add just a few lines of hand quilting with mostly machine quilting to add some areas of interest to the overall design. Be sure to check out my Hand Quilting on-demand workshop if you’re new to hand quilting, or if you’re an experienced hand quilter and looking for a few tips and tricks to add to your practice. 

When deciding on my quilting plan for my Big Ocean quilts, whether I was hand quilting or machine quilting it, I made sure to accentuate that X shape that was so prevalent in the design. The quilting design you use can pull out shapes that are in the piecing and add so much to the finished design of your quilt. You might want to highlight the diamond shapes created by the HSTs or emphasize other lines and shapes that you love in this design. 

I can’t wait to see what you all decide on for your finished quilts. Be sure to share them on Instagram or Facebook, and tag #bigoceansal and #bigoceanquilt so I can see all your progress! Thank you so much for your enthusiasm for this pattern, and for sewing along with us these last seven weeks. I hope to see you tonight for our official sew along wrap up party! Check the sew along newsletter for the link.

Here's the link to the hand quilting class if you want to check it out!

https://tarafaughnan.com/collections/on-demand-classes/products/hand-quilting-on-demand-workshop