Back To My Hoop

Ahh.  Nothing against machine quilting, it was certainly faster and kinda fun, but I just was born a hand quilter.  Turns out I missed putting fabric in my hoop.  Seriously, I feel calm just looking at a quilt in my gigantor hoop. 

This is the big star I'm making for my mom's guest room.  I was initially kinda anxious about the brown trim I put around the star, the room is a pale gray.  I was planning on sending the quilt as a surprise with a note that apologized for the brown.  But the other day my mom started telling me about some drapes my dad got for the room that look gray but are really blue and brown up close.  I so had to tell her; how serendipitous.  And nice 'cause now I don't have to feel bad about injecting brown into the room.  And good thing too, because how perfect is that houndstooth I picked up for the back?  

Also in the category of things I find exciting,  my treadle is not only operational, but I managed to operate it!  It's kinda tricky on my carpet, I ought to get it some risers maybe, but I did it.  One of my bobbins was already wound, so i stuck it in to see what I could manage.  And I totally made some stitches. 

But man alive, they are tiny.  And this wasn't even as small as it can go.  Not by a long shot. 
Now to point out the geeky parts:

• the prewound bobbin thread was like a rope, can you see it there at the bottom, it's totally a ridge along the back
• The back is majorly ugly at first, you can totally tell at what point I finally got the wheel to go all the way around
• my stitches aren't straight at all, I was totally watching the treadle; I realized afterward that it probably wasn't the best idea to have my fingers by a needle and my eyes on the big wheel

And as an added bonus, I'll throw in a story that the last one just reminded me of:
Growing up my dad always told me to cut away from myself.  Always, apparently I had a tendency to cut towards myself.  One day in college I was cutting a pineapple.  In my head I could hear my dad telling my to "cut away from yourself, Amanda."  I thought it was pretty amusing so I start to tell my roommate and then, of course, I cut myself.  Yeah, still working on that one.  But I was pretty impressed that my subconscious was looking out for me.