Hourglass Album Quilt, Quilting Update 1

Checking in on another long term project.

Elise dress fabric, Tracy dress fabric, Nancy dress fabric,
my work-dress fabric (×2), my wrapper fabric, and
a bunch of fat quarters from the Oregon City conference

Handquilting is a good activity for being home, especially in the winter (it's very nice to have the wool quilt thrown over one's lap), though it does tend to get pushed aside for whatever projects come up that have actual deadlines. This year, with no events, I ended up having few urgent historic garments and thus finally found time to work on it. 

The quilting the cascading hourglass album, ended up being my November/December and probably January/February/March/etc handsewing-by-the-TV project. I do like having something 'in hand' that can be picked up and sewed on at will. It was especially nice for this year to have this particular project, covered in the names and fabric of absent friends

Barbara Brackman's post about period quilting methods helped me decide on an approach.  As much as I love the intricate curved patterns seen on 'blank' portions of quilts, my skills are not up to the standard.  So, I opted for a triple-line diamond pattern, found in Ms. Brackman's Quilts of the Civil War. I'm using sets of three lines, spaced ~1/4" apart from each other, with ~1.5" between groups--just enough that they line up with the diagonals of the pieced seams. The original quilt I based the design on has a diamond quilting pattern, though I couldn't get a close enough view to tell if the diamonds were single or in multiples.

I'm aiming for ~8 stitches per inch, as reported of the original.  After the first couple of lines, I am consistently getting 8-10 stitches,  Measuring the first completed square, the triple diamond pattern is requiring 96" of stitching per square (so, about 322 yards 24" of quilting or 116,160 stitches for the blocks, excluding the border). The stitching is greatly compacting the batting, making a very dense and thin quilt, while the basted areas are thick and fluffy.

*For fun and future reference, in 1864, Godey's got rather flowery about autograph quilts. The description specifies that the quilting should go around the autographs. Considering some the text blocks I have, some compromise willbe needed on that score. So far, the writing is still legible when quilted through.

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