Machine versus hand quilting?

Last night was Guild meeting, with show and tell. Several people had quilts returned to them by their favorite machine quilters. It is amazing. We had five talented machine quilters at the meeting last night. It has become much more common place for people to make the quilt top, and send it out to be quilted. I still love hand-quilting, and it's an emotional response for me. I find it relaxing, and satisfying. With the backlog of quilt tops I have, one would think I could easily give in to the trend. When my cousin, Diane, arrives this weekend, one of the things I plan to do is let her go through my perfume bottle blocks, and select her favorites for a quilt. I'm working on my mental attitude to assemble them, and turn the resulting top over to Viki Kirby for quilting. Otherwise, I know I can't get it finished. Though my frame is not in the living room, it still has a quilt in it that just needs one more turn to be finished, and a design added to the narrow outer border. I'm sorry to say it has "celebrated" more than one anniversary in the frame. Just too many irons in the fire, I guess!


A few days ago, a friend of ours called, and I chatted with her a moment before turning the phone over to DH. She was once a student, and then a colleague of DH, and now a long-time friend to both of us. Anyway, she asked how much longer I plan to work, since DH has been retired ten years. I said I have years to work. Later, I overheard DH say to her, "oh, I don't think she will have any problem filling her time when she retires". He keeps saying it's not going to be as many years as I think, but I keep pointing out in return that he retired with full insurance benefits. I hit the door, and I'm uninsured. I think there are lots of people in my shoes.


I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch hour sewing yesterday. I stitched the components for four additional star blocks, rinsed markings out of my Elegant Garden block, and posted notes to my journals for those quilts. I've collected some stickers with various phrases on them, and have been having fun adding those to the journals now and then. I should make some of my own on the computer, and I could tailor them more to the situation at hand!


I got to show my Shining Star quilt top at show and tell last night, too. It was so well-received that I'm fired up to do more lettering. Well . . . obviously, it doesn't take much to fire me up to make a quilt or knit something! I also took my Colonial Girl quilt top that was a gift from Patti. Everyone was envious.

Blogger doesn't like my pictures, so I'll just post this and try again next time!