Friday, March 18, 2016

Today is a perfect day for this discussion; even Stacia and Deloise were involved in the conversation.

I’ve spent the last several nights hand quilting a small sampler quilt. It will require several more nights of quilting before it is ready for binding. I’ve never hand quilted before and I’m not very good at it. I know I don’t rock my needle the way I’m supposed to, I find the entire set-up very cumbersome to work with, and I don’t find it very relaxing. I’m in a “get it done” mode so I’ll never have to do it again.

On the other hand, I started the day with just the flimsy for this table topper. I sandwiched the project, did all the quilting, made and attached the binding all in the course of the day. It is quilted with straight lines, but they all had to be marked and all the ends had to be knotted in. It will only take one evening to hand stitch the binding down. So much faster than doing it by hand. I expect the results will look better and the piece will last longer.

Stacia, Deloise and I are all making (well going to make) a quilt called I’m a Farmer’s Daughter. I English paper-pieced a block for each of them for Christmas. The pattern actually calls for hand piecing but when we bought the pattern we thought it could be machine pieced. Stacia and Deloise are sewing at the lake this weekend and they aren’t having too much luck with machine piecing the block; and if they can’t do it there is no way I’ll be able to. We’ve all decided we’ll English paper piece the blocks so, in this case, by hand seems to be better.