For the Love of Paisleys

I never thought I'd like paisleys, as the word made me think of paisley fabric, of which I'm not a fan. But when I started free-motion quilting, I found that I really liked doing paisleys. Echo paisleys, that is. It was really easy to do and it looks so beautiful. It has a little bit of a feather feel to me, yet is a lot easier than feathers. I'm taking a leaf from the legendary Angela Walters who encourages building a personal "quilting toolbox": designs that I like, find easy to do, and can always fall back on. Pebbles and echo paisleys definitely fall into that box for me.

I've finished piecing my Modern Crosses quilt, and am in the process of quilting it. I decided on an edge-to-edge design for this quilt. While I enjoy custom quilting, for this type of busy, wonky design, I prefer to tie it together with an overall design.

I'm really enjoying quilting on my Handi Quilter, but I find that I detest the bobbin winder. It took me what felt like an hour to get one semi-decent bobbin. For some reason, my super-strong-never-broke-during-quilting Isacord thread kept breaking before it can be wound when it's in the tension disk, yet when I finally get it winding, it will fly out of the tension disk and result in a very loose wind. The Youtube video makes it look so easy, but I've wanted to tear my hair out over it ... or try prewound bobbins. That's tempting.