Wonder Chain Done

I finished the border quilting on the wonderland chain, or the Wonder Chain, as I call it :), so it's now time for binding!

I've recently started attaching the binding with my needle in the right position (as opposed to the center position).


I find that both sets of feeds (on my walking foot and the machine) now grip the bulky sandwich of quilt and binding. Also, since I cut my binding strips only 2" wide for double-fold binding, having the needle off to the right and adjusting my quilt position only a little bit - I get a really REALLY scant 1/4" seam, so that attaching the binding is much easier. Before I switched the needle position, I often had to cut some fabric/batting away from the quilt edge. No more!


I'm also still joining my binding at the end instead of overlapping the ends. It just looks so much neater. The time it takes to join the strips in the end is made up for by the trouble I save sewing on the bulky overlap :)


And... done :)


I was on such a roll, I pretty much hand-stitched the entire binding in one sitting.


I LOVE how the border quilting pops out! Just LOVE it! Doesn't it look tasty? Totally 3-D :)


I started making a pair of scissors like the ones in the snip snip print in one of the white centers between the chains, but I really didn't like the look of it, so erased it.


I think I might just leave the quilt as is... :) Don't mess with a good thing!

Right now I'm going through a highly productive quilting phase. My quilt room (i.e. living room) looks accordingly, sigh... I'll blog about the different projects you see here in the next week(s), so stay tuned!

{next to the folded up Disaster (Triple Irish Chain) quilt that is STILL waiting for a border, basting and quilting - *sigh* - you can find my Imagination 1 quilt on the couch - I'm almost done with the border! Yippee! To be revealed soon!}

What a mess! *grins*

Border Decision

Well, I've completed the full circle!

A couple of ladies in my quilt guild connected me to a local choir when I was looking for a fun and relaxed little choir to join, now I've met the sister of one of the choral singers, and said sister used to be president of my quilt guild.

I mentioned to her that I was interested in trying some plastic stencils for hand-quilting borders and two days later, she loaned me some - great! I didn't want to spend 10$ on a stencil (that's what they cost at the local stores) without ever having tried one, so this works out wonderfully.

I tried one right away on the border of the Wonderland Irish Chain baby quilt:


See the double winding braid on the blue border?

For the center of the quilt, I'm just outlinging white spaces about 1/4" in from the seams right now. About 1/4" because I'm just eye-balling :)


If the border stencil works out, I'll try a center piece stencil for the white space, or maybe something free-hand. I'm loath to mark the white area though, as I haven't tested my chalk, chalk pencils and marking pens on light coloured fabrics yet... It's just like washing a quilt for the first time ever, and I just am not really the 'testing' kind of person... I also don't test cremes etc on an "inconspicuous area" first, just lather it on and hope for the best or have a funny story to tell a few years down the road.

But seeing how many hours I've spent quilting this quilt already (that's about 1 hour's worth of border you see up there!!), I don't want to ruin it by using a bad fabric marker, so I guess I can take some fabric, mark it and see if the marker comes off again... sigh. So out of my element!

Wonderland Irish Chain

A long time ago (actually, almost exactly one year ago), I bought some MoMo Wonderland charm packs to make one or more quilts from. As always, I couldn't get myself to use them up, silly me :)


When that wave of creativity and motivation struck on Saturday, I finally opened a pack. Not only did I use the charms, I also CUT into them, gaaah! :c)

I paired 13 charms with solid white charms that I cut myself:


There are my little charm treasures, sigh, soon to be cut into...


Then I sewed each pair together on two opposite sides, and sliced them down the middle to get these half 'n' half squares.



Those were cut in half again:


... which left me with lots of these, hmm, quarter-square rectangles (QSR)? My term, I think :)


Lots and lots of them, despite having used only 13 of my treasure charms! So frugal :)


I laid those out in random 9-patch patterns to get an Irish chain design. I don't like constructing Irish chains purely out of complete 9-patch blocks, because the chain always looks so cut off around the edges of the quilt, but using the QSRs, I could just stop at a natural junction in the chain by having some 4 patches in the corners and 2/3 of a 9 patch around the sides. I'm happy with that and it was easy to do.

I joined the rows, that was quick and easy:


Then played around with some border/binding combinations - though "played around" is an exaggeration - I took the first fabric I tried :)


And now it's ready for hand-quilting, because that's what I made it for... I do like having a little project to hand-quilt, and I've also had some interest from friends who'd like to buy a baby-quilt that's hand-quilted as opposed to everything done by machine...


Don't expect a finished product soon! I'm taking my time with the hand-quilted quilts :)