Hand Work

I'm working on a new piece and am quilting it entirely by hand. That is certainly different for me! I haven't done hand work (except for hemming pants and knitting) in about a gazillion years. But something got into me, and here I am. Even though I'm at the point of no return, I have some questions about quilting threads. For this piece I used 12-weight sewing thread, but it didn't seem fat enough. And for the background, I'm using 3 strands of embroidery floss and that is working for me. But I would really like to know what kind of thread most people use for decorative hand stitching. Can anyone help me with that?

In the meantime, here's a photo of a major component of this piece, a teaser, in other words:

This was the result of some playing I did with my needlefelting attachment. I tried needlefelting all kinds of materials from wool and silk roving to hand-dyed homespun to burlap. I had forgotten all about it and when I was getting out some wool roving to play with, I found this and my plans for my little quilt took a sharp right and something I didn't really plan to do is emerging. That's just the most fun when that happens!

I have almost finished my challenge piece, that I'll call "Go Green and Spicy." The one thing I'm happy about is that the  piece does look like jallapenos (or pickles), but I'm not happy with the stitching and some other things. I'll show it to you and to my quilting group, but then it will go in the "what was I thinking" stack, hidden in a deep, dark closet!

Oh, and one more thing. I did finish the main sample I'm using for the next class I teach (time and date to be determined).

It was a lot of fun and I'm very proud of it.

Until next time . . .