LEARNING TO HAND QUILT

I’ve finally started hand quilting my queen-sized quilt. Hopefully I’m going to get better as I go along. I’m pretty sure any practiced quilter would frown on the size of my stitches – they should be much smaller, but I just can’t seem to manage a tinier stitch.

When I first started out I didn’t have a great thimble, which made things much harder. I finally got one of these Clover thimbles. It’s leather, so it feels comfortable. It also has a metal coin on the pad of the finger that allows you to push the needle through pretty easily. I really like it.

I’m just hand quilting straight vertical lines that are about 1.5 inches apart. I use a piece of low tack painter’s tape as a guide for my stitching line. This was a tip I got from Johanna. It works like a charm.

The quilt is set up on a 17″ square Q-Snap frame and I try to do an entire 17″ square in each sitting. The frame fits in my lap and the rest of the quilt takes over the couch. It takes a couple hours, but I think I’m getting a bit faster. At this rate, I have about 32 more sittings. So perhaps in a few months (and dozens of dvds) I’ll be done!

In the meantime, I’m starting to think about picking a colour palette for my Double Wedding Ring quilt class in March. Greys with pastel brights? Browns with purple tones? Aqua with pinky reds and cream?