quilting on photograph block

[Susan B.]

I've made a banner/wall hanging with 8" center blocks. I feel the block centers should have some quilting in them and know what to do for 3 of them, however the 4th is a photo printed on the pretreated fabric. Has anyone quilted over one of these before? If I would do it, I'd use the "invisible" thread. I need thoughts ASAP as I'm trying to finish this and get it in the mail as absolutely quickly as possible.

[Norma H.]

Yes, you can quilt on photos, but it's not good if you want to rip some of it, because the needle leaves some small holes that are not easy to fix.

[Norma H.]

I guess it'll depend on how big is the photo. I made the quilt bellow with four photos and only SID. It's a wall hanging and so far haven't had issues with the look of it.



At a class I took not long ago, the issue of how to quilt a photo came across, and the teacher suggested to fuse the photo portion of the quilt top to the batting, using some kind of light weight fusible, mark it on the "back and front of the batting and fuse both the quilt top photo and the fabric on the back of the quilt (hope this makes sense) to give it more stability and specially for quilts that would have other use than a wall hanging, if needed to preserve the look of the photo. You can also use some stabilizer on the photo to "make that block stronger".

Another idea that comes to mind is to SID and then put a few small hand stitches in inconspicuous parts of the photo to keep the layers together, kind of like using knots but hiding them.

Please let us know what you do and how it turns

[Norma H.]

Thanks for your ideas - I ended up printing another copy of the photo and experimenting with the quilting. I was really happy with how the quilting enhanced the photo.

[Norma H.]

Looks great! Thnk you for sharing