Do y'all remember this quilt top?
I pulled it out of the fabric cupboard this afternoon, and I feel like I never actually looked at it before. Only a very small handful of those (handstitched) hexagons are repeats; there are somewhere around 230 different fabrics in there. And I don't think they're reproduction prints, either. The fabric is nothing like contemporary quilting cotton (and can I say how much I love high-quality contemporary quilting cottons?). I would love to know more about this quilt top and the fabrics in it. Are they reproductions, or did she buy vintage fabrics, or did she (or her mother) save them up from the 30s, 40s, and 50s? Did she make other quilts, or garments with them? How old was she when she cut and stitched the top? Was it one "she", or a group of women? Fascinating. Best $10 I ever spent at Goodwill.
In any case, I decided that it was well beyond time to stitch this sweet top up into a quilt that we can put on a bed, admire and love. I made a spur of the moment leap of faith buying backing fabric, which turned out to be an exciting and, I think, perfect choice...just the right contemporary companion to all of whoever-she-was's handwork.
Which leads me to the point: I'm going to hand quilt this. It just seems right.
My impulse is to stitch around 1/4 inch inside the edges of all the hexes, which are all about 6 1/2 inches long by 5 inches wide. Maybe I could do one more layer of quilting just inside that line, too? That would bring the longest distance between quilting stitches to about 5 inches. Seems a bit far to me still.
So, what should I do? What would you do?