I can't remember if it was my mother or my grandmother who taught me how to blindstitch. They were both excellent seamstresses. I think it was my mother. This picture is a good one. You can click it to make it even bigger.Thank you all for being so concerned about my arthritis. My problem spot is at the base of my right thumb, where the red arrow is pointing.
I got it in my early 40's, and yeah, it really sucks. It's the position, not the pressure, so anything that brings my thumb and forefinger together is going to aggravate it. The hardest thing to hold is a needle.I use the fattest pens I can find, and generally try to do anything to avoid that position for an extended period of time. It doesn't give me pain, but if I were to do any hand sewing for longer than my allotted 30" or 30 minutes, then my thumb just feels really stiff, and it isn't much good for anything the next day.
So I take it easy, and do lots of stretches to keep my fingers and hand limber. If I overdo it (overdoing it is defined as doing anything long enough until my hand really really hurts), the best thing to do is massage it with ice, and then rest, neither of which is any fun.
10 comments:
You do your binding simlar to the way I do mine, only I use a strip of 2 1/2 inches instead of 3.
Would the Handeze glove help?
I also have the arthritis issue with my hands. And now the tendonitis in my thumb (at the base of the thumb) makes it impossible to do hand sewing of any kind for a bit. Not that I do much. Can't even use the scissors for now. But it's getting better.
Thanks for the tutorial on how you do your binding. I've not tried on the front before, but why not? It's fun (and educational) to see how others do things!
Great picture of the blind stitch. That is the stitch that I also use! I love it because you can't see those stitches.
I can commiserate with you on thumbs. I've had surgery on my left one (CMC arthroplasty) and am having the same done on my right June 1st. I wasn't about to try it on my dominant hand first, in case it didn't turn out well. It's been a year since the first surgery, and I'm happy to say it hurts far less than the right one.
And so I do all my bindings by machine...attach 2" binding to the back of the quilt, and topstitch in front, very close to the folded edge, using invisible thread in the bobbin since I can't hit an exact spot on the back. I save what little hand sewing I can do for embellishments.
Thanks for the details of your stitch formation -- its quite a different process than the one I learned for blind stitching... (It involves making the stitch between the quilt and the binding perfectly vertical so the thread you're using "hides" indistinguishably with the threads of the woven fabric & it doesn't have a "backstitch" component. I may have to give your method a try and expereience the difference :-)
Thank you so much for showing how you do your blindstitching. I'm going to give this a try.
I love the selection for the binding! This is gonna be one happy baby!
Thank you so much for sharing that picture and explanation of your bindstitching. It's just a little tweak from what I have been doing, and it makes a big difference. I will share a link from my blog if you don't mind so others can benefit from your great tips!
I have always stitched my binding on with the binding on the top rather than the bottom. I'm going to give your way a try next time, looks like it might be a little easier. I have exactly the same problem with my left thumb, luckily I'm right handed but it sure is a pain! Thanks for sharing...Kathy
I had surgery to help that pain at the base of my thumb. Life is so much better now, I recommend that you talk to your doctor and get referred to a hand surgeon. Unfortunately, 18 years later and now arthritis is in the joint just below my thumbnail and not much they can do for that...
Anyway, I got a bit off topic. I'm a self taught quilter, so when I was machine sewing the binding onto the back and hand stitching it down in the front, there was no one to tell me I was doing it wrong, it just made sense to me to do it that way. I often do pieced borders and it was easier to not cut off points or corners that way. I roll the binding around to the front and I can put it where I want it to land. No one notices if it's a thread or two off. But they will notice that points are missing.
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