Bogged Down

I know the reason I've returned to my hand applique'; it's because I'm bogged down with the machine quilting on the King sized Snail's Trail. While it's good for the advancement of the Hawaiian Applique' wallhanging, the Snail's Trail is not even advancing at a snail's pace! It's occupying almost the entire west side of the sewing room and monopolizing my Janome...

This is where that terrific sewing table really comes in handy. The extra leaf on the left and rear help support the weight of the quilt while I try to move this thing through.

I was going to meander from one curly arm in the pieced pattern to the next diagonally across the quilt, but that turned out to not be enough quilting. Now I'm doing a wavy echo inside each set of four. It's hard to see in the photo because the thread color is so close.

And this is the back, I'm using a steel gray thread since it has to go across all those shades of blue.

I *know* machine quilting is my least favorite part of finishing a large quilt. But I'm determined not to turn into a 'topper'! You know a woman who calls herself a quilter but really only makes tops and 'sends them out'. I've done it once or twice and I have to say I'm not nearly as intimately aquainted with those quilts as I am the ones I labored over to get quilted. :D

So while this sits in the sewing room waiting patiently for me to return to it, I have my Featherweight 'Adella' set up in the kitchen with my strippy piecing.

But to be honest... I've come to a standstill there too. The strippy quilt is colorful (rather than blue, blue and... well... blue) and therefore fun to sew on, but it's a leader-ender project. If I'm sewing on it row after row I find it's not nearly as interesting.

I'm really thinking about starting something new...