Round the corner

My quilting projects are incrementally growing bigger, up to a lap quilt now. But boy did that thing seem monumentally huge on my first go at handsewing the binding.

The inspiration was this Film in the Fridge tutorial on strip quilts and this amazing September Lights fabric I stumbled on while doing a little crafty perusing on etsy.

It's pretty simple - cut a bunch of strips of various sizes, arrange them until you're happy, then start sewing. Easy peasy. On the back, I sandwiched a few strips between two large pieces of the two fabrics I especially liked.

Foreseeing the epic battle on the quilting ground between me and my sewing machine that, make no mistake, I would lose, this was my first outsourced quilting project. And she did such a lovely job, both straight lines and a simple pattern inside the wider strips. Worth every penny.

All that was left was the binding. And so it sat. All my smaller quilt projects I zipped around the binding with my machine. But with such painstaking handquilting, it seemed wrong to do the binding with any less effort. So armed with a needle and thread with a stack of movies at the ready, I got started.

And kept stitching, stitching and stitching. Then stitching some more.

I finished this afternoon and immediately headed outside, quilt tucked under my arm and camera in hand to capture the last of the afternoon sun. Unfortunately as I was taking pictures of a quilt spread out on the grass, I was joined by my neighbour, the strong silent type who was doing the uber-manly task of charring meat on the backyard barbecue. I stuck with small talk instead of attempting an explanation, and I'm sure he headed back inside with yet another tale of the crazy neighbour. But, seriously dude, any crafter would know in an instant what was going on and jump in to hold it up for a photo.

A post addendum ... I got up to toss my new quilt into the dryer and immediately noticed the dog bed at my feet. Which is about the same size, only the pattern - a split nine patch - is far more intricate. Not to mention the crazy amount of quilting, including the bottom side of the cushion. The fabric was more expensive, too. What the heck!? I made my dog a better quilt than myself!