Coming Close to a Finish

You would think spring would be a time of new beginnings, but I seem to be in a finishing mood. Maybe I am clearing space to make room for something new.

Last summer I made the plaidish quilt top. Something I saw on Kitchen Table Quilting's IG account and had to make right now. She made it easy by offering the pattern for free! (Link here.)

I used almost 100% scraps of every colour and multicolour. I love how this comes together.

Then in February, I brought the quilt to our family crafting retreat and basted it.

It's been siting like that ever since. (Not the best idea as folds and wrinkles could set it, but you can only do what you can do.)

I wasn't completely sure how I wanted to quilt it. I settled pretty early on simple straight lines, but in the ditch? echo the seams? random spacing? It's been on my mind to finish lately so I finally decided to quilt on both sides of each seam.

I used the edge of the walking foot the judge the spacing and the lines ended up about a half inch from the seam. While I was quilting, I decided not to quilt inside the smallest width strips.

It was pretty short work to quilt the lines in both directions over two days. (Was it possibly more time clearing the table and putting stuff away to make room for it than actually quilting? Maybe.)

I was really chuffed with how straight the backing and front lined up. The vertical lines line up with the trunks perfectly!!

For the outside edge, I basted close to the edge, but did not sew the quilting line.

Once everything was quilted (except those outside lines), I trimmed the quilt. I had just watched a tutorial from Erica at Kitchen Table Quilting and followed her method. Start with the corners with the biggest square ruler you have.

Trim along two sides of the ruler and now you know that your corners are square. Then use the longest ruler you have to trim the sides, lining up with the cut edges. It worked great.

Then I sewed the binding on:

I went with the most ridiculous binding fabric: a really juvenile alphabet print. I don't do novelty prints and I really don't do juvenile novelty prints, so I'm sure this was gifted fabric from one of my sisters. After auditioning a few fabrics for the binding, I preferred the tone of these colours with the quilt. And I was doing a really narrow binding, so you would have to look really close to even know what it was. (And it uses up a yard or so of fabric I won't use otherwise!)

After it was sewn to the front of the quilt, I pressed it back:

Then I went back and sewed the quilting lines on the edges.

Now those lines are parallel to the binding and I look like a brilliant quilter.

Really I just have clever cousins who shared this quilting hack at our last retreat!!

And now I'm on the final step: hand sewing the binding to the back.

I wasn't quite as pleased with how the binding fabric looked with the backing fabric, but it's not terrible.

Look for a(nother) finished quilt soon!

Linking up with Alycia Quilts "Finished (or not) Friday"