Just an Old-Fashioned Girl

Okay so I got side-tracked and didn't get the quilting pictures posted until tonight. Gotta admit Mel's close-ups are better than mine but that is an operator problem not a camera problem. Also thought I would share a few pictures from the week's work.
In defense of hand quilting, which is hard to defend I know these days with everyone machine quilting like crazy, there is a difference in the line created by hand quilting. Hand quilting produces a soft line. The line is soft because there are spaces between the stitches. Machine quilting produces a hard line (not a negative comment just a description of the line) because there are no spaces between the stitches.....each stitch is directly connected to the next.
When you are hand quilting you can adjust your tension to ease in areas that I call fluffy. You don't have that luxury with machine quilting, the tension is even or should be. Neither one is bad or good just different.
Last but not least to go all metaphysical on you....I feel closer to the work when it is in my hands not separated from me by the machine. I am giving part of my self to the work by having it in my energy field so closely. There is a Zen like quality to hand quilting (for me) that I don't have with machine quilting. Hand quilting is quiet, meditational and allows me to slow down in this fast paced world in which we live. It allows me to reconnect to myself and to the piece.
So Mel, my dearest friend in thin, this girl will just have to stay out of the 21st century.....maybe I should quilt by candle light.