My Favorite Toy

I've been busy making DJ blocks for the last 6 weeks or so, but I do like to work on other projects as well. Several photos of my early quilts have already made it onto this blog, but today I'm including a few shots of a quilt that was recently pieced by a dear friend of mine and quilted by me. I love the scrappy look of it. My friend has let me quilt on several of her quilts and just lets me play with whatever design I want.

I used to quilt on my regular sewing machine, but got frustrated with struggling with large heavy quilts in a small throat space and with quilting stitches that were anything but consistent. I bought a mid-arm HQ16 a couple of years ago and LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT! Machine quilting is so much more fun now.

I'm still far from an expert at machine quilting, but I think I have improved tremendously since I started with the HQ16. Free motion is my favorite -- I don't really care for pantographs.

The next quilt that gets loaded onto the HQ16 will be my quilt that I hope to enter in our guild's September exhibit. The top has been finished for months. I just have to get up the nerve to start quilting it.