Status report and musings

The best piece of advice I was ever given about hand quilting is:

Do not frogstitch.

You are allowed to audition the stitches on your needle, but no more than that. The important thing is to get rhythm and consistency. Size will decrease until you hit a happy meld between skill and aethetics.

Amish quilters aim for 8 stitches to the inch. Amy Emms OBE only got

60-70% of her stitches all the way through, and only Ariadne was perfect, and look what happened to her!

Enjoy. It is therapy you would pay a fortune to get elsewhere. Hand quilting is addictive and mobile. A winner in my book!

Nel (Gadget Queen)

I loved your post too! As a new quilter myself, it's fun to hear how you are approaching this new skill. I've got a few finished quilts under my belt now but still am coping with the idea of "Math." "What, you mean I have to do math stuff, like I had in high school 100 years ago????" Shudder, gasp.......

I too, would love to leave a stack of quilts after I depart. Your posts are so much fun to read. I wish you continued success with all your pojects. Donna

Thank you so much for what is obviously good-sense advice-- the kind you don't find in the books. And I had fun researching what a frogstitch was and what happened to Ariadne :-)

Edna Pearl

Thank you, Donna! I had a discouraging day today with my sampler. There is one block ("Swamp Patch") that I just keep making dumb mistakes on and resorting to "frogstitching" before I just toss out the bad patches.

Good luck with the math; I feel lucky just to measure something right on some days. I'd like to say I learn something every time I mess up, but I think there's simply a curse on this particular block and I decided to skip it until the curse lifts. I guess that's a "lesson learned" like any other. The book "Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance" calls such problems "gumption traps." The older I get, the better I recognize a gumption trap when I see one, and the best thing to do is just walk away.

Edna Pearl

Yup, that's it. I got it from a book instead of from Beyer's book, but it's the same old block. Thanks for the reassurance. That does it; I'm putting it aside until later.

I think maybe it's not really that hard once you learn the principle, but I'm making dumb mistakes. The first time I made it, I cut the small triangles badly but sewed them correctly, then the second time I made it I sewed them all wrong.

Edna Pearl

Good advice, again. It's not falling on deaf ears, Roberta -- thank you.

I have a book that just lists the relative measurements of the triangles and subtriangles, to spare me the math. I figured out how to do the four-triangle patch from this (after flubbing it one time), but then I sewed it wrong (hypotenuses joining). Just rushing, absentminded. I sewed it right the first time. Next time I'll know better. I also learned something about chain-piecing/sewing in the process, though I can't articulate it. You know, a lot of this is practice, practice, practice -- and the resulting "feel" that I'm doing right or wrong.

Edna Pearl