Unintentional Slow Stitching

 Slow, I'm just plain slow at hand stitching anything. And not on purpose, not for any cool intentional Slow Stitch reasons, it's just not a skill of mine. Not one I've ever really worked on improving. I wish I found it to be reliably meditative or relaxing, but it's usually just frustrating. Of course that's likely related to not having the skill completely mastered. I do have some actual right-hand control/stamina issues due to the double surgeries to repair pinky finger tendons and arthritis in both knuckles of my forefinger. It's not that handwork really hurts, I just can't do much stitching with good control for very long at a time. Now that I think about it more, I'm probably nearing the stage of "use it or lose it", so I'm going to choose "use it"!

I was just working on this quilt on Friday when I took this close-up. This is a quilt that I last talked about on here back in 2009. But I started it in a CQFA Laura Wasilowski class in 2007. All of the hand-dyed Perle Cotton thread is from her, some bought at the Houston IQF show.
And looking at it close up, as much as I love the look of it, I'm not thrilled with the bits of batting coming through some of the thread holes. sigh. More texture right?

I'm within sight of the finish line on the hand-stitching required for this little quilt though, only a very small amount of surface still needs stitching. Maybe I need to just keep this project out and work on it, instead of packing it away in my creative to-go bag. It has lived there all these years with my sketchbook, pencils, and portable watercolors which have definitely gotten used much more often. This project has traveled with me to all sorts of places over the years, and rarely ever gotten worked on. I guess when I'm out on a trip somewhere I'd rather pay attention to that. And while at home I've never really liked hand sewing stuff while watching tv, because I tend to watch tv that needs one's eyeballs not just one's ears.

But now that I'm listening to podcasts while I sew...there's a unconsidered possibility. I have a few episodes left of Ars Paradoxica to catch up on, maybe I can finally get this thing done.