Thimble love!

After finishing the piecing of my "Moonlight" quilt lately, I just knew that I had to start the quilting right away. I've been itching to do some hand-quilting for a few weeks now.

I've decided to try big-stitch quilting on this with perle cotton and some lovely needles I bought on Saturday at Quilt Junction in Waterford. Lana suggested them and I have to say they are very nice to work with. They seem quite strong...which is nice since this quilt is quite thick in some areas.

I also love the chance to use my Thimblelady thimble. 

This thimble is fairly new to me and takes a bit of getting used to but so worth it. It involves learning a whole new way to hold your hand while quilting....and you can quilt with it without using a hoop. It was a bit of an investment, but this will probably be my go-to thimble forever.

Maybe you can tell, I get fairly attached to my thimbles! However disorganized I may be, I can be sure to tell you where my four best thimbles are at any given time!

So here is a picture of the beginnings of the quilting of "Moonlight through the trees"...

I've started in the middle with some quilting along a marked line. After that, I decided to just go freehand, doing some gently waving lines of quilting. 

It's very difficult for me to do these big honking stitches after over 35 years of trying to master perfect, tiny, evenly-spaced quilting stitches! I'm having a hard time keeping them even and, being so big they just look messy to me. Hopefully I'll get a bit better at big stitches and like them a bit more! 

Actually, I think they will enhance this quilt perfectly in the end!

It's another dreary day....hard to push myself up to the longarm when all I'd like to do is some piecing and curl up with my book!

Yesterday I worked on a client's scrappy quilt....which always makes me happy. To me a quilt like this just screams "authentic".

Today I am linking up with Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday.

Have a great day!