Second Thoughts

Recently I pulled a UFO out of the pile to prepare it for hand quilting.  I've been without a hand quilting project for some time now, and this was the oldest top in the queue.  The design was good for hand quilting - lots of empty blocks to fill full of stitches.  But the more I worked on marking the quilting lines, the more I wondered if this quilt was really a worthy choice for hand quilting.

Yes, the smaller quilt is truly a scrap quilt!  It was cobbled together using leftovers from this Lone Star I made for my mom years ago.  The nine patches effectively used up all the Lone Star scraps, but I didn't have just the right setting fabric to go with the nine patches.  The blocks languished for many moons until I pulled them out about a year ago and found the perfect pink for the alternate blocks.

My rationalization for not hand quilting the nine patch quilt is that it's too large for a wall hanging - and a wall hanging is where one wants to show off one's hand quilting skills.  It's a better size as a lap quilt, and I just can't see doing a lot of fancy quilting on something that will probably be used and abused by kids and pets.  So glad I marked the quilt with a FriXion pen - one swoop with a hot iron and all the marks will be gone!

Not that I'm shying away from hand quilting...it's just that I have some more worthy projects coming up next in the queue!