Basting...It's a Quilt, Not a Turkey

To give you an idea of how long it's been since I basted a quilt for hand quilting, when I hear basting I think of a turkey, not a quilt. I was thinking ahead to a trip my family is making to PA in January. Not being one to waste time, I was wondering what I could work on in the van on the 10-12 hours on the way up there. I haven't been able to successfully hand quilt in the van or car because they don't ride smooth enough (and space is at a premium with 10 of us in there).

I am over halfway finished ripping out the machine quilting and replacing it with hand quilting on this quilt. I am so happy that I dove in and started that process. It has gone very quickly. I know I'll be pleased with it when it's finished. The further ripping out will continue on our road trip. That meant I needed another hand quilting project for NOW.

In the meantime, I have rediscovered the love of hand quilting (at the beginning of this year I hand quilted this piece of history). So I decided to pull out my oldest quilt top and hand quilt it. I never machine quilted it because I thought the machine quilting would distract from the piecing, which is so interesting. I will only show a small piece at a time of the quilt, just to keep your interest. Some of you might recognize the pattern. I'll tell you this much--it's a row quilt. Two of my friends and I each made one. We all made triplicate of 2 rows and swapped them so we all had all 6 of them. I can't remember what year we made it. It was at least 3 years ago, maybe much longer. I'm going to email the other ladies to see if either of them remember. We picked one cream to use for background and the rows inbetween the pieced rows. We also used only Thimbleberries fabric so they would all coordinate. What a fun way to make a quilt with a zillion different pieces in it! This is the second one we made together.

So the picture of the day is my milliner's needle (which is about 8" long), my really bright yellow thread I baste all my quilts with, and a small portion of the quilt. I have picked out a stencil for the cream "stripes" between the rows, so I am all set to start.

My headache finally went away yesterday. Thank you to those who prayed on my behalf. I was so relieved that I slept for 3 hours!!

We had a great time fellowshipping with some friends tonight and got to meet their oldest son (who is here visiting for Christmas--he's 30). Their youngest son turned 18 today, so we had them over for a little birthday get-together. They taught us a new word game, and we loved it.

~Joan