Making The Best of My Time...

Remember, back a few months ago when I blogged about finishing my Birdsong quilt top?  I very ambitiously announced that I was going to hand quilt it and hoped to have it in the hoop "very soon".  Well, the quilt top did not make it into the hoop and sat and sat.  There were the holidays... Thanksgiving and then Christmas, and still no hooping!  I had this big revelation that I could send the quilt out for machine quilting and that means that I CAN START A NEW QUILT, which just got me all excited!

So I contacted my friend, Corrine W., who is a superb machine quilter, and she and I consulted yesterday.  I had sent her a photo of the completed quilt top and she and I had agreed to talk after our Quilters Guild meeting.  Corrine had done her homework looking around online to see how to best quilt my work in the traditional style, and she and I were of the same mind regarding how to best handle the quilting.  We talked about each portion of the quilt from the background of the blocks, to changing thread colors, to the feathers on the birds, veins on the leaves and on to the borders.  She and I think alike, which is just what I need when I am handing my work off for quilting.

Corrine says that she will have the quilt completed next month.  I will be able to have the binding on before the big Umpqua Valley Quilters' Guild Quilt Show in April!

I felt this big sense of relief when Corrine and I struck our deal.  I would have loved to hand-quilt this monster, but... I have more quilts to make and a home business to run.  And... I wanted to finish my Birdsong quilt IN THIS LIFE!  Hand quilting is not necessarily better than machine quilting.  It's just different.

Corrine will send me photos along the way as she quilts.  Can't wait to share!  And I am enjoying dreaming about the next quilt that I will make.  Endless possibilities!