Sunday 21 April 2013

Quilting itch V: The final scratch

There is a certain satisfaction to binding a quilt.

Its like being back in primary school, finishing a piece of good work and ruling off.
A nice straight, bold, precise line that finishes everything off.

This quilt needs a particularly good binding...its my final chance to reference the 25 years it is made to commemorate, so I've decided to make it from 25 pieces of fabric.  So I need to plan the order they will be joined together in...

 

Not to mention work out the maths so I get just enough to go all the way around...


I can't believe I'm resorting to bits of cereal box and a calculator to work this out! - where's an excel spreadsheet when I need one!

So its a couple of hours work for me..
Trimming...


Measuring...


Drawing the sewing line...


Lining up...


Pinning...


Until its all ready in one long piece...


Ready to be sewn together...

 

Then snipped and trimmed to make a long ribbon of binding...

 




There's no point having a straight ribbon of binding if the edge of the quilt its being attached to isn't straight as well.  The easiest way to achieve that is to throw the quilt on the floor, measure the edge and crawl all over it trimming away the unwanted bits...


Time to sew it on...did I mention it was a pretty long ribbon of binding...

 




So once the binding is on there's nothing more to be done than a quick trip round the washing machine to rinse out those pencil lines...look it really does fit in there...

 

Sadly the weather is being typically April today and I just can't predict that the quilt will dry out there on the grass, like the last big project I did.  So its time to push the furniture back again, and think to myself that I seem to have done this rather  few times for this quilt...

 

..and if I crank up the heating far enough it should be dry in the next few hours ( don't breath a word to 'i indoors -he'll get grumpy with me) and I can sew the label on and wrap it in some lovely shiny silver wrapping paper. 
I'm just wondering now if the friends celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary will really like it...


And the other thing taxing my little grey cells is ......What to do with all the scrappy left overs


mmmmmm......I feel a bit of an itch coming on.......




1 comment:

  1. Looks amazing H. I think one of your best quilts! Hope they loved it!!!

    ReplyDelete

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