Conquering fear

The hardest thing about my Handi Quilter is learning how to do custom quilting with it. I had to face the fear of failure to be able to quilt more beautifully than I can free-motion. I just finished my first big project (a customer quilt...yikes!) and I'm happy to share it with you. I'm sure to look back from the future and groan at the mistakes and whoopsies. There was some picking out, but mostly, things went as they should. It took hours of scavenging through the many digital quilting sites to find designs that I thought would look good and were in keeping with the style of quilt. Getting the designs loaded properly and stitched out in the various spaces seemed to take forever! There were a few deletings and re-loadings, but I soldiered on and finished it in four long sessions.

The beautiful quilt. Huge and beautiful.

Some of the quilting. There is a design in the HSTs, but it hard to see. I used Glide thread in Military Gold.

All that searching for just the right design for the center, and you can't see it.

Live and learn.

A look at the back. If I can overcome my hatred of ruler work, I will next try stitching ditches... I used Magnaglide Gold in the bobbin.

My thanks to my friend Gail for trusting her quilt to an amateur.

Easier project tomorrow!!