Hand Quilting

    Well, I've tried my hand at hand quilting!  Whew, that is considerably harder than longarm quilting!  This small little piece is to become a doll quilt for Mairin.  I tried a variety of thimbles to try to learn to perfect the technique of hand quilting.  Truly, it is more difficult than it looks.  The key for speed and nice stitches is in the technique of "rocking the needle".  For me, managing to hold the quilt in a hoop and maneuvering the stitches took some getting used to!  I will post another blog post to show you the final thimble I ended up with, but for today here is a picture of the first efforts.  I will continue to hand quilt the cross hatching.  I am almost finished with the first set of diagonals.  Next, I will mark with a water soluble marker the crosshatch marks to complete the cross-diagonal stitches.  The stitching lines are one inch apart.   Miss Catherine needed to investigate the quilt ...

She is not sure about it...looking closer.

She has decided it is not worth the time involved and has shown evidence of boredom with the whole business of hand quilting.  She has decided a nap is more appealing.