Assessments

Since I'm about finished with a quilt, now is a good time to follow Kathy Loomis' advice. I assessed both Straight Talk and Neutra House. I won't bore you with details of my assessments. You must run through those questions for yourself. Since I am so much more a beginner than Kath, I added a few questions for myself.

One to the first part of her questions: What did I learn?

Here are three things I learned from Neutra House. (1) Even for straight stitches with a walking foot, gloves helped with handling the weight and bulk of a larger quilt. (2) Quilting was stressful with a deadline. This may get easier with experience, but the quilting loomed as such a large unknown for awhile. (3) I don't have the patience to hide all the start and stop ends even with a self-threading needle. Oh, hang the quilt police!

To her second section, two more: for my next quilt, What can I improve? and What can I try?

Next time my facings will net 1.5" wide which means I'll cut them 4" wide and use a .5" seam. The wider facing will provide a better hand hold for understitching. The .5" seam allows for grading and reducing bulk. And next time I will free motion quilt even straight lines to avoid starts and stops, confidence willing!

From doing this exercise I saw a relationship from the former to the latter. Approaches carry over from one to the other. And will likely carry forth to the next and evolve from there. I'm not working in a series. But this is a series of learning experiences.