So Many Stitches

As promised, here's Finish #2, the Love U in green quilt. Concentric squares take a long time to hand-quilt, I found out. I don't know how hand-quilters do the intricate patterns (on traditional quilts), which must include thousands of stitches! (Hundreds of thousands? Millions?)

There's something about hand-quilting that just looks more traditional, isn't there???


Or maybe I just choose square quilt-patterns that I wouldn't do with free-motion (wobbly straight lines for me) or a walking foot (too much turning) machine quilting.

I find that printed flanelette on the back makes the quilting and any mistakes disappear, but you can see the pattern even on this small picture.


As mentioned, I did concentric squares in the solid green blocks. The prints are MODA Love U, I picked all the green and yellow prints and substitute a few from my stash to reach the right number.


For the border, I tried another stencil out of my collection - I'm usually more a fan of wavy lines, but the straight edges of this braid seemed to suit this quilt.


Now that I look at it on the photo, the briad reminds me of a strand of DNA ;) Such a science geek, hahaha!

I might yet stich in the ditch around the little yellow squares in the 4 corners, they look a bit lonely right now, and that wouldn't take too much effort.


Overall, despite taking quite a while (4 or 5 months, I think), I'm glad I hand-quilted this quilt and even more glad that it's done!


I won't even show you a picture of my pour right middle finger (the one that I use to push the needle through). My ring finger is starting to have the same hole in it, because I switched over when the middle finger was too damaged to touch a needle ;) It'll heal, and it better, because I still have about 3 circles to quilt on my BIG hand-quilting project, the Imagination 1 quilt, and that must be done for the quilt show! (Though I bet no one would notice a half circle in among all the concentric circles! So the pressure to finish is only moderate - apart from my pride!)

Soon, I'll be ready to baste and quilt the Filmstrip Cafe quilt, still debating quilting options. I might do parallel straight lines on it, as I've seen it on other quilts and liked it. Oh well, time for another anti-strep-throat pill, ugh.