Hand Quilting A Dresden Quilt

I seem to love working on huge projects that take years to finish, really, I'm an expert in the area ;-) I'm all about working on that long-term project, with an end date never in sight. Please don't say I'm the only one that does this. 

Saying that I do have a few finishes to share with you, but not today.

Today I wanted to give you an update on my Dresden quilt I made using my Sizzix machine, which you might remember me posting about a little while back. I used the Dresden Plate, Large sized die to piece the plates together, and the last few months I've been slowly, *slowly* - at snail pace begun hand quilting it. 

I'm completely new to hand quilting so it's been quite a learning curve for me. Yesterday I finished hand quilting all the plates, going around the inner and outer edges of the centre circles and plates, which was quite an accomplishment for me! (the photo above is from a few days previous to that so you might notice a couple not finished). I'm planning to quilt straight lines in a cross-hatch fashion, much like this little Dresden doll quilt. 

So there's a long way to go yet! I found going through the multiple layers in the centre circles quite tough. The thick layers in the centre didn't lend itself to the rocking motion of hand quilting, where you can take 3 or 4 stitches at a time - instead I had to do the in and out and pulling the threads constantly (which is ridiculously slow!). It was much easier quilting the outside of the Dresden plates so I might have a good run once I get going with the cross-hatching. 

I'm using Aurifil 50wt cotton thread in #2309 and the Tulip Hiroshima quilting needles in size #8. I've just realised as I'm typing I've yet to blog about the Tulip needles I stock in the shop. They're fantastic! Extremely sharp, and very robust. I'm using the No #8 size because I'm new to hand quilting so I needed a bigger needle. Remember, the larger the size number, the smaller the needle. So once I get comfortable with this size I can go up a size to #9 etc. The Aurifil thread is the same 50weight thread I use in my machine, it's very fine, which works nicely with this quilt for a subtle finish, especially as this will be my first hand-quilted quilt, I don't want my mistakes sticking out like a sore thumb ;-) 
I found a helpful video online if you're a hand-quilting newbie like me. I think the main thing to avoid is breaking threads constantly and learning that quilters knot to start and finish your work.

So now I have to mark out my quilt lines. I can't bare drawing quilt lines, it's such a tedious job, so I might try and use masking tape? I wonder if people use that for hand quilting? If you're an expert in this area, or perhaps just have some helpful tips please share in the comments below - I'd love to hear from you!

PS. Did you notice I changed my blog address to Sew & Quilt Blog ! I'm still Messy Jesse ;-) but I just fancied a dot.com and it's helpful if people Google me, so they can find me easily. Hopefully! I have no idea if you need to update your Blog readers or anything like that? Fingers crossed you're reading this ok...