Quiltville's Quips & Snips!!

Yesterday I got a 98 on my anatomy/physiology exam on the anterior lower extremity compartment! I tell you I was so brain fried when I got home that I wanted something easy and small to throw together. This is the result. I have a bin of solid color 'amishy' strips and pieces all in different sizes...these all started as 'something in the center' and were brought to 6.5" size by courthouse stepping with strips around the centers. I was inspired by a quilt I saw in a book called "Kinder Komforts" by Bettina Havig, a book filled with antique doll and small (some hired man size, long and skinny) amish quilts. This quilt is about 39" square.

My big question or dilemma is now....how do I get all these things that I have pieced and want to hand quilt.....hand quilted? Some things are just not meant for machine quilting, and that includes anything amish to me. In the last few months I have pieced 4 amish type tops! And I am currently hand quilting on my "best things" quilt, but it seems that other things like bindings always take up my hand work time and the quilting doesn't get done as I dream it to.

I don't know what it is, but I can sit for hours at the sewing machine piecing away, but I can't seem to make myself sit for hours on the couch hand-quilting. It is just as important, and just as productive. Why can't I do it? I piece to music, and it is soothing to me, but I can't hand quilt to music, and the TV is too attention grabbing to be really productive quilting while that is on either. I'm thinking books on tape or CD might be the way to go. I need to check out the library.

I suppose I could always just give up physical fitness all together...maybe that hour a day I spend jog/walking with the dog could be better spent on my butt on the couch hand quilting? At least I'd have something to show for the limited free hours I have a day! :c)