I reached another May goal yesterday. Spent the morning making another Prayer and Square quilt. I think I'll take a break from this for awhile. Thankfully there haven't been that many needs for prayer in my church (well, there is always a need for prayer, just not drastic, we need to get together and pray for this person, type of need) so I have 4 quilt flimsies stacked in my drawer to be called into use. Besides, Leiya will be here next month and the sewing room will be reconverted into her room (I've "borrowed" it for the past year) and I'll probably put the sewing machine away for awhile. That's okay, as I have quite a lot of hand quilting to do.
Speaking of hand quilting. Have any of you quilters out there ever participated in a quilting bee? Since my quilting group has the bazaar quilt at the quilting stage, for the next couple of months when we meet, we'll just be bringing our own projects to work on while we chat. If we knew how to have a quilting bee, then the six of us could gather around the quilt and work on the bazaar quilt. But all of us are hoop quilters and we twist and turn the quilt as we go and I don't think it is possible for even two of us to work on one quilt at the same time. I've read and seen pictures of Amish ladies settled around a quilt frame but I've never really seen a quilt frame in person. Is is possible to make a fold away one? (Japanese houses are too small to have a big frame out on one side of the room (or taking up the whole room!) How about quilting? I understand how you can quilt from one direction to the other in a straight line, but what about curves and feathers and leaves etc? I can't imagine quilting without turning the hoop as I go. Even hoopless, you have to turn your quilt. Do these ladies quilt using right and left hands? Use their thumb? It's a technique I would love to look into so if any of you have experience, please share!
(Yes, I know Tonya... I used your instructions to quilt hoopless but as I got towards the middle... I am a fairly good with hoop hand quilter so I decided why try to change some skill I'm good at. Thus the hoop. But all other advice has been faithfully followed!)
7 comments:
I don't know much about hand quilting at all, but I have heard that a lot of quilting frmes get pulled up to the ceiling so there is room for the family during the day.
It certainly does sound like you would have to move your body (since the frame would be hard to move as easily as a hoop would be ) around to where you wanted to quilt, and when your body couldn't twist any more, you would roll and unroll more of your quilt.
No worries - quilt the way that makes YOU happy. Your quilting is looking great. As far as frames goes, my only experience quilting that way has been negative - totally hated it. But that's just me...
Your quilting is looking great, I don't have time to hand quilt very much so I really can't pass on any tips. Sorry.
Happy sewing
Kerry
Sorry Tanya - do virtually no hand quilting so I'm not a person to give advice at all on a bee. Shelina has a good point about raising the quilt up to the ceiling when out of use - I've seen people do that with small model train layouts too. You'd have to be careful of light fittings and of course have sufficient headroom to not bash your head as you walk in that area. How nice to have your daughter back soon - is that back to Japan for good now?
Your fans are coming along nicely.
I'm a hoopless quilter too, lol.
tanya, when I was a child in the US midwest sixty years ago, sometimes the quilt frame was on ropes and pullies. It was pulled up and stored on the porch.
When the ladies showed up to work it was let down and each woman had a chair.
I've watched the Amish and Mennonite women, even girls as young as ten. They all seem to have the same consistency of stitch. thelma
Is that Kanji in the corner?
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