savoy019

Dust off that half quilting hoop you have stuffed away somewhere and let's learn how to use it!   It may feel awkward at first, but soon it will be your saving grace when trying to finish hand quilting the edges of your quilt. In order to load your quilt, work on a table or flat surface. The ticking is where you will pin the edge of your quilt, being careful not to attach it so deeply that you will catch the ticking with your quilting stitches. Use study, large pins, what some call "nails" - not the fine, very bendy kind we like to piece with on our sewing machines. Here is the very edge of my quilt.  I usually quilt as far as I can with my regular 14-inch round hoop.  The large half hoops are not balanced as nicely, and therefore a little awkward.  That is because the straight edge where the ticking is located is lighter than the round edges securing your quilt. See my blue line...that is my reminder to quilt no farther. The tension adjustment is just like a regular...

What started out in my mind as echo quilting on my "Contentment" quilt is really stippling, I guess.  And the stippling sometimes feels crippling as the end of my thumb has gone from normal to calloused to cracked callous.  OUCH! But I am making progress!  I have completed 2 outer borders, 2 corners, and I am most of the way through my 3rd border. What keeps me going?  DVD movies and political intrigue on TV (the former being less disturbing than the latter).  "Sully" (which is FABULOUS), "The Sound of Music," the second "Sex in the City" movie, "Bridget Jones' Diary" (oldie, but goodie), all the "Harry Potter" movies, "Beauty and the Beast"...I am enjoying going through my DVD shelves. Every time I show a picture of my half quilting hoop I get a lot of inquiries about where I got it.  It was many, many years ago (early 90's, I think).  It has "Grace" stamped on the inside.  I went to the Grace webs...

The hand quilting is progressing...hoop-full by hoop-full.  I finally got around to cleaning up the scraps and snippets left over from basting the layers and realized I used a " Quilter's Dream Cotton - Select" batting remnant.  I wanted the applique motifs to really "pop" prominently.   (Jill, was it you who asked about the batt?  It was not a " Warm and Natural" batting remnant, as I first believed.)  I have got to start stapling a label on my batting remnants... I really like hand quilting with a "Request" weight batt...it is easier to make finer stitches.  But now that I am using this thicker weight batt I am having to just do the best I can. I have all the center squares and first stop border done, so now I am concentrating on the second and outer borders. The center of the quilt (all blocks plus both skinny inner borders) is 1936 square inches to quilt. The outer border alone is 1428 square inches.   I have learned not to get to exci...