Bringing out the tea towels!

 There are a few moments while hand quilting, that I love best. After your quilt is sewn, layered, pinned or basted…you put your quiltring on, draw the pattern on the fabric and then you put in that first row of stitches….. ahhh pure bliss! I also love the sound of the thread knot `plopping` through the top layer of fabric when you start a new piece of thread and when you finish it. Ofcourse the moment when it`s all finished and you can finally attach a binding.

I`m now in the middle of things, at another `milestone`: putting on the tea towels!! This means that the middle part of the quilt is all done and I can move on to the borders! Yeey!

When you`re doing the borders, you can only put half of your quilt into the quiltring and that simply doesn`t work, hence the towels.

Mine have a waffle structure and the are rectangular, so when folded in half they are fairly long and because of the structure, they are as thick as the quilt itself. Now, how do I use them?

A picture says more than a 1000 words…

(Oops, upside down..)

And you` re ready to quilt!

I will start a little above the corner, so there`s room to attach a label later on. I like to quilt through the label, so it will never get loose and lost.

Ofcourse you can start at any corner you want, but neighbour friend C has this rule; she calls it `quilt psycology`:

When quilting a rectangular quilt, always start at a longer side. Spirits are up, energy flows, yeey borders.

Then you reach a short side, all good. 

After that the second long side: am I done yet, how much more must I do, I`m fed up, this is never ending…

Then: ahhh only one short end to go, I can do this, I`m nearly there, it`s DONE!!!

So, I will start at a long side……:)