I spent quite a bit of time the past month making up 48 string blocks for a donation quilt. And then I took the blocks over to Mrs. Furui's and she helped me put them together and add a very pretty border. We both spent a lot of time trying to decide how donation quilts should be quilted. Hand quilting is very nice but so time consuming... And for the string quilts, I think there is too much thickness. In the end I guess I will quilt two halves on the machine and then do some time consuming connecting on the back. That system is working out fairly well on the Alphabet Soup quilt I've been making but have yet to show connected...
Mrs. Furui has a top made for a donation quilt (doesn't she do lovely soft colors) but since she doesn't do machine quilting she will go at this by hand. I'm not offering to machine quilt it for her because I don't do so well myself (and I don't want to take responsibility for messing up her pretty quilt) and I have enough in my own piles that aren't getting done.
And mentioning machine quilting, Shasta wanted to know how I go from flower to flower on the Alphabet quilt. I don't! I just jump around from motif to motif leaving long threads behind me to clip and hide into the batting later. This jumping technique was one shown in the Happy Village book and it was eye-opening. "Just jump to a new place? What about thread ends later? How about the quilting coming undone?"
If you do a few stitches in the same area when starting and ending a motif (or whatever it is you are quilting) then it serves as a knot. The hiding of the threads come when the quilt is taken off the machine and I'm sitting in front of the TV. This is another time consuming task but fairly relaxing. I love my "cheater needle" where the threads can just slip in from the top!Off to the pre-school I go!
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