Almost Done

This week has flown by.

I've started some holiday shopping,

I've cooked up the Halloween pumpkins for holiday pies,

and I've spent many hours in my sewing room

machine quilting a holiday quilt.

Over the past couple of weeks

I've been debating with myself

about how I should finish my

Home For the Holidays quilt.

Should I do

big stitches with perel cotton?

It would fit the style of the quilt because of

the wool appliques,

But it might take more time

than I wanted to spend.

This is my "put your $ where 

your mouth is" quilt.
 It's my WIP project

that I pledged to finish and

because it's a holiday quilt,
it made sense to me

 to finish it now so I could actually use it

in the next couple weeks.

So that meant no big stitching.

 I needed to

machine quilt it.

My hesitancy was because

it had been awhile since I had 

machine quilted and

my skills were a bit rusty.

It also meant I needed to mark the quilt.

I'm pretty finicky about how I do that.

I use either a mechanical pencil or

chalk,  when I'm marking a design.

I don't use markers that need to be washed out because

I don't wash most of my quilts when I'm done.

This one, with the wool applique, 

wasn't going to be washable.

So I was left with the option of

either machine quilting freestyle or

using stencils and chalk and

pouncing the designs.

The good part about pouncing is

that the marks aren't permanent.

The bad part about pouncing is

that the marks rub off easily.

The designs have to be marked in

small bits at a time,

and it's good to dust your machine often.

I'm just about finished,

and I like how it's turning out.

I used three different snowflake designs,
 

although all the patterns weren't specifically snowflakes.

There's some free-styling around the appliques,

and it will be a combo in the borders.

With the holidays fast approaching

it will be fun to have this quilt finished.

The good thing is
my confidence with my machine quilting

has been restored.

For me,

there's a time and place for different finishing styles.

No one way is right,

it's just what fits the project and you.

Until Next Time-