making progress

I have begun the hand quilting on Natalie's quilt.  I know, hand quilting the entire thing makes me sound crazy.  But, I like to keep my hands busy in the evenings while we watch TV anyway, so it's going pretty quickly...as far as hand quilting goes, anyway ;)

See that pretty star in the middle?  It's exactly like the picture in the book and that's really what I love about the quilting.  It would be challenging on the machine and I find machine quilting somewhat stressful as is it, so that's what led me to go ahead and hand quilt it. Natalie's so excited, but she's being sooo patient too, which is good.

Now, I need thimble advice.  I do not like any thimble that I've tried, but all of them have been hard and not flexible.  I bought some of those stick-on types, but I expected them to be soft and they're hard plastic so the needle just slides right off of it.  It's very annoying.  My finger really hurts after awhile, though, so I need something.  Has anyone tried the soft leather thimbles?? Until then, a band-aid works better than anything else I've tried :)