Progress on Duchess Reigns

Yesterday I clicked on the space heater in my sewing room, turned on an awesome audiobook, sat down and returned to quilting Duchess Reigns after more than 18 months on a shelf.

The progress is still excruciatingly slow. The density of this quilt requires travel stitching over certain spaces 3-4 times, which builds the thread so it looks beautiful, but the thread can easily break once the area gets too thick. In one space I counted over 20 thread breaks. It began feeling like I was breaking thread every 50 stitches or so, which is SO annoying!

The progress is slow, but snapping photos like this allows me to see how much progress I made in one day. It’s easy to get bogged down with a quilt like this and I think documenting every victory is important. I’m going to start snapping more photos with each ray space completed just so I’m able to see that progress is being made.

So yes, it’s still tedious and boring, two of the reasons why I quit working on it. But now I can see the light in the tunnel and I know if I stick with it, I could knock her out in a few days or weeks of steady effort.

The quilt also FEELS easier to quilt now that I’ve switched to the Juki TL2010Q. I never realized just how contorted my body had to be to quilt on my other machines. Now that I can actually see all around the needle, this feels so much easier to see what I’m doing as I fill each space.

Visibility is one of those things I just didn’t take much notice of before, but it’s definitely making a difference in my attitude and how my body feels after several hours of quilting!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day