I'm waiting for some backing to arrive on my doorstep for a client's quilt. I ordered some about three weeks ago, but when it arrived, it just wasn't going to work. It was more pink than I expected, but no problem, I have a quilt of my own I can use it for. I ordered something entirely different and thought it would be perfect for the client's quilt. After waiting for about a week, I received an email that it was sold out and my order was cancelled. Back to the drawing board. I found a pretty good substitute, ordered it, and it's on its way to me.
While I'm waiting for the fabric to arrive (you probably wondered what my ordering backing fabric had to do with the quilt police, but it really does lead up to today's project), I've been working on a few other little projects.
Several years ago I made a stained glass wallhanging. It was hand appliqued and hand quilted, but I was never really happy with the look of it. There was just too much fabric around the applique pieces. It wasn't awful, but it could have been better.
Today's project was to "fix" that wallhanging. I decided to load it on the longarm as is - binding and all. That alone might have brought the QP to my door!
I pinned some strips of scrap fabric to the top and bottom of the wallhanging and used those strips to fasten the wallhanging to the leaders. I had originally echo quilted (by hand) about 1/4" from each appliqued piece, and I left the hand stitching in when I put it on the longarm. I then proceeded to do a small meander inside the hand quilting to take up some of the excess fabric. Again, the QP would probably have been mopping their collective brows. I'm sure they would have told me I should remove the hand stitching and stitch in the ditch around the applique before filling it in. Nah! What do they know?
Believe it or not, it all worked out - the stitching sucked up that fullness in the quilt, and then I decided to attack the borders. Here's how it turned out:
Although I'm not a very good photographer and the quilt may look a little lopsided in the picture, it's really not. It's flat and it's square - couldn't ask for more. The border quilting doesn't show up in the picture, but I did a double line of stitching about 1/2" and 3/4" away from the black border. Between the outer line of stitching and the binding, I again meandered to take up some of the fullness.
I completed a few other little projects during the last week, as well. The first two are doll quilts that will be donated to Toys for Tots through our quilt guild:
The striped one was done using the Quilt As You Go method, and the other has a simple meandering design with loops.
And I finished a fall table topper last night.
Finished is good in My Pieceful Corner.
