WIP Wed...er Tuesday: By Hand

First off, sorry the gritty, poorly lit Instagram pics.
I've had my Linky Love quilt (designed by the amazing TracyJay, who let me test her pattern out so I could use my V & Co Ombre jelly roll strips. Pattern available here.), sitting around for awhile. I was trying to come up with a way to quilt it that could do it justice. I knew it would involve a whole lot of colored thread, but beyond that I was stuck. Inspiration struck over the weekend, and yesterday I tucked in to a whole new world of quilt finishing.

All prepped for basting - no not spray this time.

I have tried hand quilting a couple of times. Actually one of the first crazy ideas I had as a brand new quilter was doing a whole cloth baby quilt, just quilting cute little shapes onto pretty fabric. After probably 2 shapes I gave up. That quilt is hiding in our storage area.

Pins in place (and of course I realized after I put them all in how easy they were to close if I just laid them on their side...see, I'm new at this!)

I took a hand quilting class when we were living in Monterey. I think that is one of the only classes I've ever taken. I was at least 20 years younger than everyone else in the class. =) We worked on those small pre-printed panels, and the teacher taught us about taping the backing to a table, and then adding the batting and quilt top, then how to stitch baste. Ugh stitch basting. That is something I will never love! And then we got to work stitching and I found I could do it...ok.

First section stitched. Random stitch lengths, plus a few that didn't make it all the way through. Not bad, but definite room for improvement. 

I finished up one orange ring last night, and this morning I am almost done with a green. It helps to not be watching TV while stitching, but Once Upon a Time is so addicting! (We started it about a week and a half ago, got Hulu plus yesterday so we could watch the current episodes on our TV, thanks to our Roku (Netflix + Hulu + Roku = we don't have cable, and are perfectly pleased.)

Pretty pretty. I love the puckering of hand quilting. 

I don't know how long this will take, thankfully it doesn't need to be anywhere til May. If anybody had any great ideas for the center of the rings, I am open to suggestions.
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Adding more pictures! I made a lot of progress quilting today, I have almost all of the center rings done. I don't have a shot that shows it all, but I wanted to show how great the colors are.

Quilt top - pre-quilting. I think it's upside down. Look how vibrant those colors are!

WIP stats:

1 new finish this week, 4 in October
2012 Finishes: 28

WIPs: 24