quilting time.

now that all the the embroidery is done (for now) it's time to make the sandwich.  i've found that just going out and buying a sheet set is the easiest and cheapest way to get a large swath of fabric for the back.  i use quilter's dream cotton batting for the inside.  i love that stuff!  for almost all of the quilts i've used the pink one (it's called "request", mid-loft)  it's great for hand and machine quilting, not too thin, not too thick, etc.

when the sandwich is all ready to go and pinned up on the wall i draw in where all of the quilting lines are going to be.  this one, like the most recent ones, i'm going to hand quilt around the "space thing" and then machine quilt the black expanse.

once all the lines are drawn it's time to pin the sandwich together.  i found out about these safety pins a while ago and they rock!  they're slightly bent so that you can easily scoop up the three layers of the sandwich and not have to fumble trying to make sure you got everything.  it's the little things, right?!

then, BAM!, into the quilting hoop.  i stretch it pretty taught; my quilts are all a little wonky, so if things get distorted it's actually for the better.

and now the quilting begins!  i actually really enjoy hand quilting the quilts.  i get excited every time i get to start quilting and although it starts to totally suck after about a week or two, i still just love doing it.  if i had infinite studio time (and it didn't take so long) i would hand quilt all of the quilts.  i really don't like the look of the machine quilting, but there's not that much i can do about it if i want to do more than a couple of quilts a year.

i've gone through lots of needles and i've found that i like these size 7 darning needles the best.  they're long enough you can get up to four or five grabs of the fabric for each go through, but they're still slim in your hand.  don't even get me started on the "quilter's needles"--those things are like 1 inch long.  how are you supposed to do anything with those things?!