Slow Sunday Stitching 2

This week, I was able to get some close up photos of how I am quilting this quilt that we believe my Great Aunt likely made. Right now, it is in a 14 inch hoop connected to a table top frame. It’s a great size to work in your lap. Unfortunately, I am working on it of an evening in my bedroom. The chair that is in the room is my gliding rocker that I rocked my two teenaged sons in when they were babies. It’s old, rickety, squeaky, and when I sit in it, my chunky-monkey thighs are just at an odd angle for holding it comfortably on my lap. Instead of leaving my hands free to work, I feel like I must keep hold of the hoop to keep it steady.

I have used this hoop many, many times before, so I am not exactly sure why it just doesn’t feel “right” in my lap this time. Perhaps I have just lost the feel for it temporarily as I have let this project languish a bit over the summer months. I do have a larger, round hoop that I might switch it into to see if that helps. I am not sure of the size of the hoop, but I am just reach to the center when it is sitting in the crook of my elbow, so it is technically a bit too large for me. Who knows what will work? I will just keep on trying and stitching.

The latest stitches I did simply look bad where I couldn’t get it all together, but that is okay, they are not so horrible that they will be noticed (unless you specifically look for them), so I am not overly concerned. The few quilts that we have from my Mom’s side of the family were strictly utilitarian. Nothing fancy. Just very warm and useful. So, even my worst stitches are in keeping with the type of quilt this was intended to be. I made the backing of plain, white muslin, partly because that is just the kind of thing my Great Grandmother, Grandmother, and Great Aunts tended to use when flannel wasn’t available. Plus, I doubt I could have found the perfect fabric to make a pretty back. Reproduction feed sack fabrics are available locally, but this has fabrics from feed sacks to early 50s and I didn’t want to distract from the quilt top. This is all about the ladies who made the top, in my opinion. I want to finish it up to honor their quilting legacy, not make it anything that would have been unintended by them. To that end, I will most likely bind it in white muslin also. Boring, but typical of utilitarian quilts.

I also fit in a bit of hand sewing on some binding for a baby quilt that will be going to a shower today. I will have a post up about this particular quilt later in the week. It is a machine pieced and quilted gift that needed to be finished quickly, but I think I enjoyed hand sewing the binding more than any other part of the process. There is something very soothing and tactile about needle and thread.