Mary, Talking Process

The before and after of my process on Sunday looks a lot like the before and after of my process any day.

It's all about the small change.

I'm hand-quilting this sampler quilt that is made up of blocks from a quilting bee I did with some friends. The process is slow--I sent out the fabric for others to make blocks in October 2009, then once I received the blocks I decided to sash them, then I decided to set them on point, then I decided to quilt it by hand. The nice way to put it is that I'm a careful maker, but the reality is that I'm fussy and precise and otherwise slow in some ways. In other parts of my life, I'm impatient to a fault, but in quilting I'm not in any rush. This will get done. Eventually. (And it's winter, so the hours spent with a half-finished quilt on my lap are just as good as the ones sitting under a fully-finished quilt!)

What I love most about this project is that each time I finish quilting a block and move on to the next one, I think about the person who made it, friends I don't get to see enough, or friends I have never even met. It's amazing that even though sometimes we might not seem so real to one another, we have this tactile proof, these very real quilts.

The challenge I've encountered is one I hope you can help with. So far, I've just been quilting each block as I go, tracing the pattern mostly. How should I quilt those side and corner purple triangles, and the aqua border? Originally I'd thought I'd use a complicated flowery stencil I have (all the fabrics have floral patterns), but now I feel like that's too busy compared to the rest of the quilting I've done.

Any ideas?