Quilting The Carolina Christmas – Pulling Threads or Un-Quilting

I know many of you are new here, reading about this quilt, but some background on this Carolina Christmas Quilt might enlighten you as to why I might be Un-Quilting a section of this quilt.

About a year and a half ago I was trying to quilt this particular piece using a frame system whereby you just had to set your machine on a rolling base and it would be sooooooo easy. I had even test driven the system at a quilt show and thought my quilting answers were found. But after my first attempt (above) it was disaster. I packed up the system and it’s been under my sewing table ever since.

I then hand quilted scallops…Which you all know takes a very very long time. So about 1/3-1/2 of this quilt is either hand quilted scallops or is partially messed up due to my rookie machine quilting experiment.

So this morning, after a full week of meandering, I finally got to the section that needs to be Un-Quilted. Pick, Pick, Pick… it’s tedious.But it IS coming out thankfully…Once all this is out and I can get back to meandering the last quarter section I’ll be ready to work on the borders!!!!

Yesterday I practiced on pieces of paper swirls, squiggles, stars…But later practiced some Holly and Berries…You can see my progression from top to bottom. The top…lost in hollyland…to the bottom where I somewhat have a rhythm going on. This would be for the 2 inch inner border area…still thinking swirls for the outer border though. But here’s that rhythm in my head…

Berry, Berry, Berry, Curve, Down Out, Up, Holly, Curve over the top, Up Out, Back, Holly, Swoop down and up Berry, Berry, Berry….repeat.

I think just a few more practice runs on the drawing board combined with a few runs through the machine ought to get me to a point of confidence to give it a go…

~Stay tuned!

Cathy