Anyway, I mentioned wanting to go ahead and machine quilt some quilts, rather than poke along with my hand quilting on everything. Not that I'm giving up hand quilting - I love it too much to do that! - but it would be nice to have a few more finishes under my belt instead of just flimsies. It turns out she's been teaching free motion quilting, so she gave me some pointers and a pep talk.
On Saturday, I put on my big girl panties and gave it a try. I changed the needle, I dropped the feed dogs, I fiddled with the tension, and I doodled all over a little quilt sandwich I had made for that purpose. I had fun, but I definitely need to do more practice before I actually use free motion quilting on a real quilt.
So, the feed dogs came back up and I gave the wavy stitch on my machine a try.
I really like the way it turned out! And I love the fact that I had quilted a whole quilt in a matter of just hours!
Yesterday I sewed the binding onto the front and today I hand stitched it down to the back.
A finish! This one has to be a record for me - I started this project on Labor Day, just 16 days ago!
Time to get my Charlie Brown Quilt ready for quilting, I guess.
