Quilting the three layers by hand.

I love the old school quilting, that's how I learned a veryh long time ago.

However, due to a neck and shoulder injury I am unable to do it all the time now; but I do every now and again. Even when I'm in pain I think its the best of quilting.

I do! I use plastic for my templates rather than cardboard but a template is a template. I use shears to do my cutting because I cannot use a rotary cutter. Anything that really begs to be rotary cut, like strips, is done by My Hero (also known as my husband).

My accuracy with shears is as good as a rotary cutter after many years of dog showing.

The only place I use a sewing machine is to do a stay stitch around the border of the quilt just before I put the binding on by hand.

I have fibromyalgia and I also have chronic tendonitis in my hands. Quilting doesn't bother my hands at all. Before I started, I looked around for instructions that were written with regard for ergonomics. I found them in Liuxin Newman's book, _Perfect Hand Quilting Without Pain_.

I think she's absolutely correct when she says that if quilting hurts, you're doing something wrong.

I use a hoop on a floor stand, the Grace Hoop Squared. The hoop is just to carry the weight of the quilt; I keep the quilt very, very loose in the hoop.

I've tried without a hoop but my arms got tired of the weight of the quilt too quickly.