quilting, actual quilting (stitch)

I'm getting a little bit amazed with myself. The baby quilt that I've been working on for months is toddling towards completion at a somewhat dizzying pace. I've been working on this for less than two months, and granted it's small at about 28"x40" but it's seriously coming along. I know lots of quilting bloggers zip through multiple quilts in that sort of time frame but I'm going to give myself a little slack here. I'm still new at all this and more importantly I do it all by hand. No sewing machines for me.

After a couple week's break due to bad weather and being too busy to go out, I've made a lot of progress in not a lot of time. I aquired the the quilt batting and I pin basted the layers together. Honestly I didn't really enjoy the process of laying everything out and pin basting the whole matter. It's fussy and it's important to get it right otherwise when I'm actually quilting everything's going to be screwed up and the fabric could be all rumpled and look crappy. It's not something that I can do sitting comfortably, and I spent a lot time hunched over and my back was in a fair state by the end of it.

That was about two nights ago. Since then I've grabbed out the quilting hoop that I was given for Christmas and have been going away like a busy beaver. I don't particularly need the stand, as this is such a small project and have just been working off the hoop.

The process of quilting the layers together has been surprising. I expected this to be a tedious part of the process. I expected it to take a long time. In fact, it's rather speedy. Quilting across a block takes only a fraction of the time that it takes to piece the same block. Here I was thinking that this part of quilting was going to take ages and in fact it's just zippy. Two days into the quilting and I'm about a quarter of the way through.

The only complaint I really have is with my stupid thimble. I hate thimbles. The fact is clearly evidenced in the sorry state of my right thumb and left second finger, which are constantly being poked by needles to the point where the skin is developing splits and callouses at an even pace. (I just wish the callouses would hurry and develop a touch faster.) Pushing a needle through multiple layers of fabric and holding multiple stitches at once though requires a thimble. I've got a couple to work with but none of them are anywhere near comfortable, so I may start a small thimble collection until I find a decent one.