A Quilty Life Update: The Pleasures of Fall

I cannot believe it is the middle of October! The last few months have gone by so quickly!

Since my last post,  I have been very busy enjoying all  aspects of fall, travelling with my parents and doing a lot of ‘quilt shop hopping’, taking a lot of photos of all these experiences, and of course doing as much quilting as possible, in between all this.

I have been taking part in a challenge started by Aussie quilter and blogger, Meredithe of ‘Pomegranate and Chintz’ . Her challenge was to stitch for an hour a day. I knew it would be a challenge but I was desperate to try, after all, quilting had brought me so much joy throughout the unusually cool and dreary summer.

I had previously been hand quilting my most recent project, practically every day for at least a half hour, if not an hour, so I knew that I could probably achieve this goal. Of course, realistically, I knew that once my parents arrived for their visit it would be very difficult to maintain that pace. But I still tried.

Since the start of the challenge I have lost track of how often I am quilting but now that I have a new thimble, which works like a charm, and now that I have given up with the idea that I need to quilt with a hoop, I am breezing along.

Of course every once in a while I get a little obsessive and try to perfect my stitches and therefore pick up my hoop again and try desperately to,  ‘get a grasp’ of how to hold my quilting hoop or rather how to keep my quilt in the hoop, so that it is loose enough to quilt quickly but stable enough to actually stay in the hoop.

I have given up this battle for the moment but am continuing to do as much ‘research’ on the topic of hand quilting and in particularly quilting with hoops.

I have also started and finished a Craftsy class on hand quilting, that I have had my eyes on for a while now: Andi Perejda’s “Hand Quilting- Heirloom Design and Technique” course which you can access on the Craftsy website by clicking here.

I have to say I am absolutely thrilled with this class. The class, unlike some of the other Craftsy classes I have taken or started, is very personal and in depth. I guess it is marketed to a different type of quilter and thus is styled and structured in a completely different way than your typical craftsy quilt class.   I will have to explain more on this class, in a review. For now, all I wanted to say is that it is amazing to watch if you are at all interested in Hand Quilting or Quilt Designs and different types of quilts, as she shows you a number of different types of quilts she has made and quilted by hand.

I am not bashing any of the Craftsy classes, rather just like how this one is shot in her home, rather than on a quilting or sewing studio set as so many quilt class videos are done.  Her work is amazing and she is obviously someone with a lot of experience in both teaching and quilting.

I really recommend you to give her class a try if you are at all interested in hand quilting.

Well I wish you all a great week!

Jodie