Fear of Quilting

I love sewing the quilt tops but I am terrified of the quilting. When making my first ever quilt I had so much trouble quilting it that I decided I would always send quilts to the long-arm quilter to be quilted instead of doing them myself. However I soon realised this was a hugely costly decision and I would have to learn to do them properly myself. I have several tops that have been languishing in my pile of unfinished objects gently nagging away at me everytime I begin a new project, buy new fabric or download a new quilt pattern.

I decided to research quilting properly, went on a free-motion quilting class and then this week I decided to begin quilting one of the quilts that I thought would be most straightforward i.e. it is made up of lines and I was planning on quilting it with my walking foot in straightlines. (I'm still scared to start free motion quilting - I'm only going to be able to overcome one fear at a time!).

With some help from the kittens I pinned all the layers together and prepared the quilt for quilting. I used a gorgeous cotton sateen for the back. I chose it just because I liked the design but I could not have chosen a better fabric if I had tried, it is absolutely dreamy to sew. With some trepidation I began the quilting and was suprised to find that it was ok. Time consuming, about an hour to quilt each block and I have done three hours so far but really not as bad as I feared.

Like so many things in life the fear was worse than actually getting on and doing it. Luckily I had the ever-helpful Honey on my side as you can see below. The quilt is not finished but is on it's way. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to quilt for more than an hour at a time but I think if I do a block a day it should be done by the end of the week - fingers crossed.