St. Anthony's Quilt - End of April update

Yesterday afternoon, I spent a few hours quilting on the St. Anthony's quilt.  I couldn't go on Wednesday to the regular quilt day, so I thought I'd go in by myself for a few hours to give it a little boost. 

I enjoyed my quiet afternoon.  I was reflecting on all the nice snowy afternoons we enjoyed over the part of the winter that I was with this new quilting group.  The tea and goodies each afternoon were something I looked forward to.    I also reflected on how much I've learned about hand quilting, and how much more confident I am.   I put some thought on what we will do different in the fall when we start up again. 

We're tired of doing the stitch in the ditch.  So the next quilt, will have most of the quilting in the non-seam area.  We call that the butter.  Because it's like quilting through soft butter. That's good and we like that.  I was thinking maybe we're ready for feathered wreaths.   That might be a little scary, so maybe that idea might be reserved and brought up if we do a quilt in the fall of 2012. 

I learned that next time, we'll  use a poly batting.   This one is a cotton batt, and I guess handing quilting through cotton is harder than poly.   We'll try the poly in the fall and let you know if we find a difference.

There's not much stitching left to do now.... The stars are all done.  It's just the sashing down the center  and that needs to be done and ten inches or so along the border on each side.   I predict by next weekend, we will be taking the quilt of the frame, and I'll be doing the final binding and attaching the label.

The unveiling of this LeMoyne Star quilt will be at a coffee party after church in a couple of weeks.  It'll be a fun day.