Doing the Things We Love to Do....

Imagine my surprise when I noticed the leaves outside my quilting room door had the same colors as my latest circles! Hmm... I do love fall and all it's gorgeous colors. These circles represent days 27 and 28 for Quilty 365, for a total of four weeks! Yay me! So many people are joining in, being artistic, thoughtful, playful, frugal and/or just plain dedicated. Love it! Quilters really are amazing!

2 more circles for Quilty 365

I'm going back to the smaller needle and regular hand quilting thread for this quilt. At first it was hard to make the transition--that big stitch quilting requires a much larger needle! I started with the very light pink thread, ripped it out, tried every other color in the picture and then went back to the light pink.*sigh  Sometimes it's hard to know what to do. I switched to the soft gold thread for the little half square triangles and finally, finally it's starting to click for me. Some quilts just have to be cajoled and talked into a bit of stitching it seems....

Muddy River in the hoop

I also picked out a fabric for the binding on Big Stars. A bold blue was the obvious choice and I was so grateful to find enough lurking in my stash. It's a Peppered Cotton, so quite a different texture from my usual binding fabric. Now the batting needs cut off and then it's all ready for the hand stitching. If I don't get to it tonight then it will be something to work on later. Always nice to have mindless hand work to plug away with during family holidays.

Initial phase of binding on the Big Stars quilt

People keep saying that this quilt was hand quilted very quickly. Hmm.... Maybe, maybe not. I sandwiched and pinned this quilt on October 8th, put it immediately in the hoop and started stitching. The thing is, I hand quilt for an hour or two {sometimes more} almost every day of the week if time is available to me. Plus I had one day I was sitting with my cousin, helping her out and keeping her company. That was probably a five hour quilting day? The stitching pattern is merely an echo style quilting or something extremely simple and it's big stitching done with Perle cotton, something that really does move along at a faster pace compared to regular hand quilting.

Perhaps someone more dedicated to hand quilting would have doubled the stitching done on this particular quilt, but I'm feeling quite satisfied with the amount done. This is not an heirloom style quilt because I for one can see every flaw in the quilt made from my inexperience with sewing curved seams! Not that I don't appreciate the effort and skill building this quilt allowed me to undergo. I am definitely more accomplished and less frightened of this type of sewing now that I've tackled something this adventuresome! However, I am a huge advocate of putting my time into the things that will most appreciate my very intense and personal labors.

Hand quilting is my thing and yes, I do love the results. But not every quilt needs or will even look better with intensive stitching--not to my eyes or thinking. And really, what else would we base our decision making on? Some people make quilt tops just so they have something to hand stitch amazing patterns and designs on. That's not me. I hand quilt because something needs to anchor the quilt together for future use, I adore the look, appreciate the {mostly emotional} benefits, and well, honestly, it suits my lifestyle and pocketbook. Did I say that I adore the look? If I didn't, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

So glad I have time today to link up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching!