It ain't over yet...

I was so thrilled to hand over the quilt to my friend J. to be quilted. The "memories" project, formerly known as the "dead-guy" quilt. After lugging his clothes around for five years and finally cutting them into rectangles last winter, after picking a pattern where I could use quilting cotton to control the stretch and sewing my strips and putting 30 squares together at last, I had decided, since I had two more of these things to do, that I would let J do the quilting of it, that I had "done my time."

But alas, it was not to be.

Seems the stretch is bogging down her longarm quilting machine. Even though she's doing free-motion stippling on a Gammill, she says the foot is still stretching the fabric and pushing it along. She's tried every way she can think of.

She thinks I'll have to tie it.

I know there's a solution, a way to have it quilted, but I don't know if I'm prepared to go there, after all the time I've put in (for free) and have yet to put into this project.

It's called hand-quilting. Now mind you, hand-quilting this puppy would be hell on earth - the fabrics are all different thicknesses, but the range is mostly from exta-thick to fluffy.

It would be extremely difficult to needle.

What is this part of me that longs to pass thread through 3 layers, be they as thick as seven? Why is it that I don't feel that a tied quilt is good enough?

I don't know.

I only know it ain't over yet.