At Home and Away - ready for binding

I finished the tying of At Home and Away. I'm also done quilting the centre of Folk Art Finery, and have a good plan on how to quilt the borders, so I might have that done by the end of the weekend. Then its miles and miles of binding - my fingers are sore just at the thought. The At Home and Away top was finished about a year ago. It has two final vertical borders of pinwheels - I remember when piecing this quilt that I designed, struggling with what to put on those last two borders. I think I spent weeks designing on EQ, laying blocks and the top on the floor, test sewing. I think I must have been pretty fed up by the time I got to actually piecing those pinwheels. While I was tying the first long border (93") - I'm thinking, gee this is sloppy - crossed points, blunted points, straight seams that didn't line up. I'm trying to hide them with my knots, but I'm getting madder and madder, 'cause all I can think is that the centre is just about perfect, but the pinwheels are like some one else sewed them. So on to the second side, about a third way through, there was some major cursing and stomping of feet as I realized that this just wasn't making me happy. The whole quilt risked being seen as poor sewing quality, all because of these darn pinwheels. I ended up ripping out the tying, and the two long borders.

The picture above shows a section of the pinwheels - yes, I might be being picky but up close the piecing "mistakes" do show more obviously. I've saved these long rows as they would make into a border or part of a strippy quilt.

I'm not sure I'm happy with the resulting "balance" of the quilt, but it was better than including yucky piecing. Here's an EQ drawing of the resulting design -

The quilt is now about 93 x 67 - odd size because the two long borders are gone - but the rules do say "tied bed quilt - any size". :)

The other odd thing about tying this quilt, is I have no idea what the judges might be looking for in a tied quilt. Do they ties have to be evenly spaced (mine aren't - its a sampler quilt so I put them as close together or as far apart depending on the design area I was covering). Do they all have to be cut the exact same length? (I tried here, but no, they aren't). I do think its important to do the quilt in a way that will make you happy, first, and the judges second. I hand basted the edges to prepare for the binding - without the security of quilting nearer to the edges, I wanted to be sure there wasn't going to be any rippling or sliding of the backing while I sewed on the binding.

Here's a picture of a section of the tied quilt, where maybe you can see how the ties are evenly spaced within a type of block, but each type of block has its own spacing -

Tomorrow I'll have some pictures and stories about the Folk Art Finery quilting - I've learned a lot from this adventure.

Almost Log Cabin

I finished this top on Friday - the log cabin block design is by Judy Martin; I designed the secondary block and the quilt layout.

This will be a table topper for our dining room - we have a living/dining room combination, and I don't much like our dining table - putting a pieced quilt on it, rather than a table cloth, brightens up the room quite a bit.

An oops turned good

I finished piecing the centre of the Sally Post quilt yesterday. This quilt design was made available to quilters from Gayle at Sentimental Stitches - I believe the pattern will be again offered as a free download later this year, or as a purchase all at once.

The original pattern called for 36 blocks, set 6 x6 with sashing including an outersashing. I wanted a rectangular quilt for the church donation, so I made 30 blocks and set is 6 x 5. I've ordered the border fabric and hope to quilt it by early September.

My son is holding this one for me - but he's still not as tall as his Dad (!) and I couldn't get the whole quilt into the picture.

The oops? - well here you go. I had already sewn 18 of the blocks, complete with sashing and corner squares set to the right side and bottom. When I went to cut out the sashing and squares for the last 12, I decided - wrongly - to not look at the pattern and merrily cut then 3 1/2" wide. They should have been 4" wide! Grrr.. Meanwhile, I was thinking about the border and binding, and decided to go with the peach colour, same as the sashing, but a tone on tone instead of solid, and the red floral for the binding. The order was sitting on my computer while I was cutting. When I realized what I did, I thought, well thank goodness I hadn't press send yet because I can order more sashing fabric if I've run out because of the oops. So I recut and thankfully I had enough and pressed send on the order.

The next day, while sewing the blocks together, I realized I didn't account for the outside sashing! I should have ordered more solid, and now the order has been processed and its on its way (this shop is fantastic - Fabric Shack - excellent service and help when you need it). Back to EQ to look at how I can fix this and I discovered that it looks way better with just the border and no outer sashing - I had never even thought of this as the original doesn't have a border and I had just kept the outer sashing on the design when playing with the finishing ideas. So all's well that ends well.

I'm just about done the Almost Log Cabin...so back to the sewing room.