Hand-stitching -- the workshop 1

I just got home from a gig with the SAQA Indiana region.  The organizers thought it would be more convenient if participants didn't have to shlep sewing machines across the state, so the workshop focused on hand-stitching onto finished quilts.  I am not a world-renowned expert on this subject, having used the technique on only a few quilts, but I was excited about getting to lead this session, figured that I would learn as much as anybody else in the room.

My interest in hand stitching as the last step came with this small quilt that I made a couple of years ago for a group show with the prompt "green."  After I finished it and posted the image to our group blog, it sat on my design wall for a while before it actually had to be shipped.

The longer I looked at it, the less I liked it, and finally decided it needed some extra pizzazz.  So I got out my embroidery floss and stitched more little rectangles to echo the pieced ones.  Here's the final version, so much better than the original:

Kathleen Loomis, Sargasso 2 (detail below)

So, echoing my own experience, I asked the SAQA ladies to bring an already-quilted small quilt that seemed to need something extra.

I'll tell  you more about what happened in a new post.