Quilting Hoops

First off - Happy Canada Day!! We're 142 years old! Beauty, eh? Go Canada! Get your McKenzie on! One thing I would like to clear up from another Wikipedia article is this... '"The sign Mind the Gap is used in subways and train stations in Canada, as in the U.K., whereas the U.S. signs commonly read, "Watch your step"' - I have never seen this... now mind you I don't take the subway or train very often, but when I have, I've never seen that. Then again, I've never even noticed the majority of stuff they talk about lol. I will say though, I've had people go "Oh, you must be Canadian!" when I asked where the washroom is. Typical answer - "Yes, I am, and a Canadian who needs to pee at that, so where is it?" I'm also very saddened by the fact no one understands how back bacon (aka peamale bacon) should REALLY be cut, or how it should look :< (You make the Canuck cry)

Oh and especially for Canada Day since this shocks the majority of people... Yes, our milk comes in BAGS. ZOMGWTFBBQ?! So does milk in South Africa! lol. You get 3 quarts (the small bag) in a big bag. And to anyone wondering how the hell you handle that to pour, we have milk pitchers
Mmmm homo milk... (aka Homogenized, or whole milk.) And by the way, 1% milk tastes like water.

So onto what the title is about - Quilting hoops.

I bought an 18" or 20" round quilting hoop because I got fed up of wrestling with a 10" embroidery hoop. While I loved the sheer size of the 20" hoop and not having to move it around as much to keep quilting, it was too difficult to hold and work with - it may be better when it's attached to a stand and you don't have to hold it etc, but I found it hard to work with for lap quilting. So we took it back to the store and I picked up a 12" x 20" oval quilting hoop. This is working much better for me, in many ways. It's wider/taller than an embroidery hoop - where as the embroidery hoop is about 1/2", a quilting hoop is about 1" and has bigger blocks for the wing nut and screw. I'm not wrestling to get the quilt into this hoop like I was with the embroidery one - it kept popping off and making me wish I had about 4 extra hands. The other plus was that I misread the labels on the peg board where these were hung in Michael's. The big round hoop cost $26.99 + tax, and I thought the oval was the same, but it was actually only $8.69 + tax or something like that. It's not a super high hand carved from solid hardwood ring, but it's not cracked etc like the small embroidery hoops get. It has a few rough spots here and there on the edges, but that's nothing a quick rub with an emery board won't fix.

I've been debating about doing a video on how to hide knots, but there's tons of them on Youtube and I can't do the "secret knot" anyways lol. After I wrap the thread and start pulling the needle and thread through the wrapped bit it unravels *shrugs* I also can't get the hang of using a running stitch for quilting, and mom is nitpicking the fact my stitches look a bit messy on the back. But the ones that AREN'T messy AT ALL are almost too small to see the individual stitches lol. Looks pretty good on the front though. I *do* need to work on keeping the sizes consistent though lol - I have stitches that are small by majority's standards, and then there's the ones you can barely see.

I believe that is all for now. Maybe next quilting post I will post pics of my current quilting project!