old quilter, new trick

 

i'm trying to get one thread-length a day stitched into "wiltshire rows." a few days ago, as i was nearing the outer edges of the quilt, i thought about how when machine quilting i occasionally catch the excess quilt back in the stitching, sewing it to the back of the quilt, but that it never happens when i handquilt.

sure enough, as i was working on the farthest row to the edge, i did just that! well, i thought, that's a first. i'm 13 years a quilter and i just managed to make a new mistake. how fun is that?

 

there's nothing i hate unpicking more than handquilting. fortunately for me, this happened on my second set of stitches for the row, so i didn't lose much. i hadnt' even pulled the needle through when i noticed what i'd done. all i had to do was fish out the knot at the end, snip it, pull through, retie, and get stitching again. now i'm right back at it.

progress on the handquitling - one third complete. 

there are 15 rows of chambray i will be quilting on both sides, and one thread length currently reaches approximately halfway across the width of the row. so that means i have 60 thread lengths to complete the quilting. so far, i've done 21 of those, putting me at just over one third done.

getting there one stitch, one thread at a time.

something else curious i've been musing on as i stitch is the way i still don't have my preferred stitch style figured out. i don't have a consistent stitch length or distance between the stitches. even when i'm using the same needle every time, these factors vary. i am definitely leaning toward small stitches, but it's the distance between that varies the most. and i honestly can't even tell which i like best. there is appeal in both larger and smaller distances between.

the above photo is pretty consistent on both sides of the small block.

this is a good example of not being the same or consistent.

i wonder if this will work out over time, or if it will always vary? this is my 12th handquilted piece, so it's not like i'm completely new to it. i definitely have learned to make smaller stitches than when i started. but they are still noticeably inconsistent, even across one quilt. it's a mystery to me!

goodness, these two close-ups are not showing my seam-matching skills at their best. that's okay. all of it is a-ok because i make quilts that are good enough, often pretty darn nice, and get loved a lot. living with all the imperfections and embracing them.

now, back to the needle and thread because i have some downtime!

little moments

i was scrolling my quilt photos from 2024 and found a lot of small quilting moments i didn't record, so i'm collecting them in a post of their own. it's the small quilting chores (and moments) that add up to big quilting finished, after all.

i want to celebrate, or at least recognize, all the parts that make up the whole.

the opening photo (above) is two projects intermingled on my sewing table: bits of liberty betsy and green crossweave i cut for "star hollow" blocks before i changed my mind about the project sitting on top of pieces for flying geese blocks to finish off "grellow garden geese." both of these projects need some rethinking before they move forward.

although i completed "beach brellies" in advance of my grandson's 2nd birthday, i was out of town for his actual birthday (not granna's choice!). i fully intended to have a small brithday party for him at my house, complete with a little cake and the presents i'd collected for him. however, it just didn't happen.

when his sister's first birthday arrived in december, i knew there was no more procrastinating the gifting. so i wrapped his quilt and birdies together to give to him when i brought her gifts to her.

he does use his quilt and the heather ross sea horses on the back are his favorite part.

this was a handquilting moment in the fall. a little laptop movie watching while i stitched away at "liberty holly hobbie." can you name the flick?

a gathering of most of my "stella grande" quilts - because i want to make a book of them. i did some photo books of a couple of them for my kids they belonged to, but i was very inspired by jolene klassen's self-published quilt book to make my own quilt book just for me.

jolene made her own book with blurb, a self-publishing site i have used to slurp my private family blog into a book before. it's beautiful! she just made what she wanted the way she wanted and offered it up for publishing-on-demand from the blurb site. i was smitten with the idea as a way to make a scrapbook of two major quilt projects of my own - my stella grandes and my liberty lap quilts. 

but i got stumped on a few technical issues. i don't know what program she used to compose her pages that aren't photos. if i ever get it figured out, i'll do the project and share how i did it/what i use.

side note about the above photo - the quilt in the photo was also made by jolene and i spied several of the fabrics in it through out the book in other quilts. so fun.

i don't just make quilts, they actually get used around here! this is fluffy on my "valoe" quilt.

d4 and i did eventually figure out what we wanted to do with her 8th birthday/sweet 16 quilt, and we involved the whole family. everyone stitched together at least one block for her quilt, adding the family to the quilt's story. i love this so much.

she says she doesn't like sewing, but you could fool me half the time.

did i mention the time i made one of my cute betsy hearts backwards? so frustrating when i only had a few minutes to work on the project and wasted it with a series of mistakes. ah, well. somehow i still make quilts!.

snuggling under jolene's quilt, contemplating d4's quilt.

uh, hello, selfie with low-volume crossroads quilt.

i have no explanation.

 layout of my longterm scrap project, "bonnie lass" by jen kingwell (resized), to see how it's looking. have i even talked about this one at all on this blog? i'll go look. 

report - it got a very brief mention twice. i'll save the explanation for another post.

so there's the little lost moments of my quilt life in 2024, the forgotten photos.

2024 was a very big finish year for me. i had several quilts almost completed that i pushed over the finish line into "finished and in use' status. that was quite satisfying, for sure. but moments that add up to a finish are mostly where my quilt life exists.

2024 stats

finishes - 9

starts - 6

start to finish - 1 (kind of)

tops completed - 2

quilting completed - 1

handquilting - 3; 1 completed, 2 in progress