That is so lovely and fresh looking. Wonderful work.

Depending on the size of the quilt you're working on, if it's bed size, make sure you are sitting in a comfortable chair with your feet elevated as your legs will help support the fabric. I use a recliner love sit that I bought for this purpose. In IL, before relocating to FL, I had a nice comfy straight back chair and had to buy a nice foot stool specifically for quilting.

It is possible to hand quilt while sitting at a table as I do that at the rec centers but I take up an extra chair to prop one leg up on to support the quilt as I move it around.

I do begin quilting somewhere towards the center of the quilt and the actual quilt layout determines whether I work a row of blocks across, top to bottom, side to side or work blocks one at a time moving around the first block I started with. With hand quilting, it honestly doesn't matter but I do prefer to begin somewhere near the center area and work out to the edges making sure my backing stays smooth.

You MUST baste heavily, at least every 2 - 3 inches in every direction. For the first time ever, I'm quilting without the hand basting, just heavy pin basting and it's working well. You do have more margin for risk of wrinkles or puckers in the backing - or so machine quilters tell me.

I highly recommend you give it a try. Be patient as it may take you a week or so to feel fully comfortable but my stitches are smaller and more even than they ever were before and the real plus is the only pain I ever experience is when I manage to stab a finger as thimbles and I aren't friends but for this quilt, I've actually been using a thimble about 50% of the time which is amazing to me.

You may need to adjust a pin here and there as you proceed as well. Every now and then I'll detect a small wrinkle on the backing and feel the need to adjust the pin in that area and it works just fine. Relax, enjoy and please let me know how things go for you. The members in my chapter who've made the switch were all amazed at how quickly they all took to it and it's really puzzling the machine quilters at this change that's been slowly happening since I joined the chapter. I like to have something in my hands to work on every time I sit down and a quilt is my preference as it is for most quilters but most don't want to haul their machines to quilt meetings at the rec centers for them, the meeting time is quilting time wasted or missed while I sit there happily quilting away while visiting with them.

I prefer to work on quilts in panels rather than say an entire queen sized quilt - even a twin is larger than I care to work on so a twin would be done in 2 panels of 3 or 4 rows each panel and then the borders are added last and quilted last - just easier for me.

I use a variation of Marti Michell's <Machine Quilting in Sections Book.> I started using her technique years ago when she was interviewed in Womans Day Magazine. I bought her book because my machine quilting friends are interested in my technique but mine won't work for them. They need to get her book and actually use one of her recommended techniques for machine quilting as they want to avoid having the entire quilt on the sewing machine as much as possible. For your next quilt, I highly encourage you to check out her book and work in panels as it will also ease things for you comfort wise.

You can order her book from www.NancysNotions.com. Search by her name and it should come up. I believe she also has a web site. You can try www.MartiMichelle.com and see if it comes up. Her books are also sold on Amazon.com.

Good luck, enjoy and please share your experience with us.
Hugs
Patty

Very nice. You guys did a great job. :thumbup:

Thank you.

Thank you Pam.