It's a beautiful quilt Renata. I think Kathy is right if you stabilize it with SID then you can work on any section you want to to begin with. It doesn't have to work from the centre out. I would usually SID around every object on the quilt because I want them to pop out and then tackle the background in some way. But even if you decided to do nothing but cross-hatching this quilt would still be beautiful and unique. I don't believe that you would mess it up and if you have done lots of practice with Leah Day then you are ready. Just make sure that you do a good 15 minutes practice each day before you begin on the actual quilt to warm yourself up for the real job. Good luck.

Renata, what a beautiful quilt! Just so you don't feel alone, I'm fairly experienced at machine quilting and I get nervous and intimidated before doing a larger quilt! Okay! I think I read that you have been doing Leah Day exercises on small pieces- that is an excellent way to jump in. Your quilt is a little like those smaller Leah Day pieces- if you look at it, there are several smaller areas that are separate, rather than a larger overall pattern. That is good! If you stitch in the ditch to hold things together and straight (I call that nailing it down), then you will have smaller areas to quilt. You can select some related designs to quilt in these smaller areas. If you feel up to it, you can outline some of your designs, like the rabbit in the center, etc. You could give the moon a texture and keep the rabbit unquilted except for the outline, perhaps. Just go slowly and build up your confidence as you go.

When I start the first few stitches I always worry about how well I will do. then I get caught up in doing it and realize that it will be okay, and even wonderful! You can do this.

Good quilting, Kathy

I'm posting a picture of my first round robin with my mother and sisters that I had made reference to in the "Okay, Count me in!" section of the forum. Since it is not a pineapple block quilt, I am posting here. The quilt represents an ancient and lovely Chinese (and Japanese, and others have their own version) fable of how the image of a rabbit (a jade rabbit) came to be seen on the moon. It took me about a month to do the center (my blanket stitch does not look very good up close) and then off I sent it to my sister, Daniela, for the first border. As you can see, everybody took off with it and went to town in interpreting the fable. My mother has since taken the story and re-interpreted her own way in her own quilt.

Maybe it is okay for me to be afraid to try... somehow, I think it would take a lot of chocolate and a fair amount of vino for me to want to tackle this. I welcome ideas here too. I can actually stitch in the ditch with a fair amount of success so I think it's the first thing I'd do. After that, I am still lost... But, I also recognize that fear of messing up this quilt that is pretty special to me on many levels is pretty high up there in my thoughts. I really do not want to send it out for quilting either... I'm determined to do it myself. The question is: when? And of course, how?{!-- ia0 -->Rabbit in the Moon Center.JPG{!-- ia0 -->