Dutch Treat Quilting

My friend, Crispy, wanted to see progress pics of the quilting on my Dutch Treat quilt. She's a master hand quilter and even in my best dreams I'll never reach that level, so I hesitate to even share these.

I'm definitely not a hand quilter! And I can't quilt well in a frame, especially something like these little blocks which require lots of frequent, tiny direction changes. I'm quilting small sections (this piece has five horizontal rows) at a time and in my lap. This allows me to continually turn the piece to outline all these tiny shapes.

First I quilted in the ditch around the sashing. Now I'm going around all the shapes, keeping the quilting always in the white fabric. These blocks are 4" finished, so some shapes don't have very much room left for quilting between the shapes. That means I'm often quilting not only through both layers of top fabric (none of the blue is trimmed away so that the shadowing is even) but right through the turn under allowance of the reverse applique. The end result is that I'm most often quilting through five layers total. Hard to keep stitches small and even, especially for a novice hand quilter like me.

But I'm enjoying the process as I work on this in the evening while watching TV. And over all I think I'm going to be happy with it. I'll have a real sense of accomplishment I hope.

While I'm sharing progress pics...here are some blocks I've made over the last month for a darker version of "Remembering Grandma". I'm mostly using Civil War repros.

We've received over 4" of rain in the last day and a half. I hope it's done now. Lots of flooding in the area and our police officer granddaughter has had to deal with accidents and stranded motorists. We pray she and everyone stays safe.