Hand stitching quilt finished

I finished the hand-stitching quilt some time ago but never got around to putting a sleeve on the back or posting a photo to the blog.

It started as an exercise in hand stitching from the wrong side of the fabric -- I find that when you can't tell exactly what you're doing, it gives a great air of spontaneity and surprise.  When I realized that I could use this piece as the center of my International Threads quilt, I decided this would be an experiment to see how I liked putting machine stitching (the quilting) on top of hand stitching, which I had never done before.

I added black fabric around the edges of the stitched piece to make it the right size for IT, quilted it, and then added a lot more hand stitching over the top.  Some of the additional stitching was to partially cover the machine quilting, so those lines didn't stand out quite so strongly.  Some was just because I find it hard to stop stitching once I get started!

Now that Uta is here in the U.S. I quickly finished the sleeve so she can take the quilt back to Europe with  her next week.

Kathleen Loomis, Night Garden (detail below)