Saturday, May 29, 2010

Learning to Quilt

In American English we speak of making quilts. The Japanese talk about patchwork. It's really both - you piece the patches together for the top, add batting and backing, then you quilt. Quilting is the stitching you do to connect the layers.

Stitching, of course, in the quilts of long ago was done by hand. Many modern day quilts are stitched by machine. Since my patches were hand stitched my teacher said that machine quilting would not be appropriate. So, I've spent a lot of time in the last two weeks hand quilting my Japanese Memory Quilt. My finger tips are tender in spite of using a thimble and a special finger cap. Some days I have to give it a rest.

It needs to be finished by about June 20th, my teacher has scheduled an exhibition for her students' work. Yikes!

There are some "in process" pictures on Picasa. Click on a picture on the right. I'll post new ones when I finish.

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