Elephants : Quilted, Bound, and Done!

Last time I showed the Elephant Squares quilt I'm making, it was being pin basted. I think the first time I found time to work on the quilting, I was supposed to be packing for a trip but Troy was napping in the bedroom. What can ya do? ("Quilt" is always the answer.)

I found a rainbow variegated thread in my stash that matched the colours. I'm not crazy about the look of variegated threads, but I was happy to use something I already had and it did match really well. It was a 30-weight (meaning thicker) thread so it did show up nicely on the front.

I put on my walking foot and stitched on both sides of each seam.

I got through the one direction in about an hour and finished the other direction on another day.

I was disappointed that even though I used the walking foot, the fabric was still distorted.

Can you see how the middle seam (from top to bottom between the pink and blue, the left polka dots and right polka dots, and then the green and pink) is lower than the seams on the left and right sides of the polka dots? It definitely was off enough that it affected the stitching going in the other direction because the seam wasn't straight anymore. I'll have to see what more I can do to control the fabric movement (on the next quilt).

I ran into one snaffu. While quilting, the edge of the backing fabric got caught up in the stitching.

I was not happy about the thought of undoing all those seams and sewing them again. (The variegated thread wouldn't match; there would be all these starts and stops in the quilting.) But then I realized that all of the fabric folded back under the sewing was excess fabric. (You always make the backing bigger than the top and cut it off at the end. It works better; trust me.)

So I took some sharp scissors and cut the fabric away right beside the seam:

Then I took a thin tool I have and ran it along the seam on the other side pulling the fabric from under the seam:

Here, no longer a problem:

I did that to the fabric everywhere it was caught under some stitching and got it all straightened out:

Ok, it looks like a mess, but that's all getting cut off anyway!

Once the quilting was done and the quilt trimmed, it was time for the binding. I had been thinking about this a lot because the colours of the front and back aren't perfectly agreeable. I thought about a red to match the backing (or some of the backing itself) but the only red on the front are a few of the elephants. Not enough for a red binding to look good.

I finally decided that I would use the blue from the front. It would match the back well enough. But when I looked, there certainly was not enough blue. (I only started with a fat quarter, after all!) My next idea was to do a scrappy binding with the four solid colours from the front. Would there be enough?

I looked at what I had:

One strip of each colour. But they were a little more than 5 inches wide and about 20 inches long. So I could get about 40 inches of 2.5 inch binding from each of them. Was that enough? I measured a side of the quilt and it was about 35 inches. Since there are four sides at 36 inches and four colours of binding with 40 inches...yes there was enough!!

I cut them up and sewed them end to end.

Since I didn't have a lot of extra, I did a perpendicular seam instead of a bias one. I might have anyway because I liked that the colour changes were straight perpendicular lines instead of an angle.

I decided to sew the binding to the back of the quilt first,

and then flip it to the front to be sewn by hand.

I had been thinking I would sew it by machine while I was making it, but near the end I had the idea to hand stitch it with some visible big stitch sewing with the variegated thread.

I like it! I had some issues sewing down the corners with the visible running stitch until I realized I should sew the miter folds of the corners before I sew the edges down with the running stitch. That fixed it.

And here is the quilt:

It's fun to step back and see all the elephants marching across the quilt. :)

Here's the back (for the record):

I used a solid thread on the back that matched the red. And yes, those are gloves on my hands. Yes, it was freezing. I couldn't feel the tips of my fingers by the time I was done taking pictures. So cold!

I did not planning at all for where the binding colours would land. Sometimes it matched a block,

and sometimes it didn't.

The only thing I did plan for was to end with a green strip so there would be less green when it got trimmed. (Sorry, green. I'm just not that into you.)

I still have to wash the quilt and make a label. But that doesn't keep it from being done. :)

Bright Stars on Black Quilt Finished!

I mentioned I'd been working on the quilting of the Bright Stars on Black quilt but had to put it away while entertaining company. When I was ready for my living room to be taken over by my sewing machine and paraphernalia again, I brought it out and continued the job.

The first thing I did was figure out where my bright strips were going to go for the binding flange and then pieced the pieces together. I didn't have enough length or variety to match the colours of the inside stars, but I followed the general flow from one colour to the next as best I could.

I hand stitched the flange on all four sides to baste it in place and sewed the binding to the back instead of the front. That was so I could fold it over to the front,

 and use some more "big stitch" sewing to finish the binding.

I used two strands of floss (as I did in the center) and changed the colour to match the thread colour used for the stars in the border.

You can see the floss on the binding stitching
change from orange on the left to green on the right.

Although I did mitre the corners of the binding like usual, I simply overlapped the ends of the flange:

I like the colour it gives on the perimeter of the quilt, but the flange is rather sloppy, as you can see here,

 and here:

I think I could have pulled the flange tighter when I applied it (and that's what I'll try next time). Since this is put together already, I am considering sewing the flange down. It would be about the same amount of sewing as sewing a binding down. Or I could let go of perfection expectations and just enjoy a little "texture" on the quilt!

Before I sewed the binding on, I tucked in a hanging sleeve. The top is sewn in with the binding and the bottom is sewn by hand to the back of the quilt.

The sleeve doesn't run all the way to the edge of the
quilt. You leave a little room for the hanging hardware.

The sleeve was sewn from strips of the backing that were cut off the sides of the quilt. I had never thought of that before, but I'll keep it in mind. You often cut off about 4" when you trim a quilt and a hanging sleeve is usually made from an 8" strip. So sewing two of them together would usually work. (In case you're wondering why the hanging sleeve looks so loose, it's done on purpose to leave room for the hanging bar.)

Here is the quilt on a bed:

 The center part covers the width of the bed, and the border hangs over the edge nicely.

I didn't specifically plan for that it's not too surprising. By that I mean, if the centre had worked out to be much larger, I wouldn't have added a border. If it was much smaller, I would have added two borders. Although I didn't make it "for" my bed, I did want it to be a bigger quilt (without becoming a king size!)

I've shown the quilting I did in the center, but I don't think I've shown the borders. I did some dot-to-dot quilting between the border stars. (The straight lines below.)

I was going to echo the angle in the outer part of the border to get triangle shapes or maybe a zig zag, but when I drew it out (in chalk directly on the quilt) it just didn't work because I didn't put an equal amount of space between the stars. Then I thought of just going straight down the border adding simplified "line stars" wherever it seemed best. I liked it.

So I decided to add the same kind of stars between the centre stars. The first one I did had three "scattered" stars, not lining them up.

Then I realized it would be easier to just imitate the border stars and do the three of them on a continuous line:

That save me a few starts and stops.

At the sides where there was a little more space to fill up, I made a "T" at one end and added some stars there too.

In the areas where there was even more space, I again filled it in with scattered stars before realizing that three lines of stars would fill the space just as well. (Again, with many fewer starts and stops!)

Here is the entire quilt:

And the back:

The coloured floss is more visible to the eye than on camera, but I think you can get the idea.

Project Summary
This was a fun quilt to make. I started it in 2017 after two things happened. I saw the Pecking Order quilt tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Company and my first thought was that it would look great with bright fabric on a black background. Then soon after, I got a lot of black fabric! (A lot!) The fabric didn't have the best feel to it, but it was sold as quilt backing so I decided it was good enough quality to use. It was all in small chunks (about 11x17) with a few very long strips (which were great for the borders and binding!)

Since all the center blocks units are the same (the stars are created with the arrangements of the units), I pulled out some scraps and made units to my hearts content. I thought I had kept track, but when I finally got to putting the top together, I had enough for two tops!! This gave me plenty to chose from to make stars from units with similar colours. And once I had the stars together, I laid them out to figure out the arrangement. I really like the ombre rainbow effect, but I didn't go into the project planning it.

I like to use leftovers from the front on the back, so that is where the flying geese (the triangles) come from. The rest of the back is pieced from the never ending black fabric. Like I said, it doesn't have the best feel, but I just couldn't justify using other fabric when I had all this black fabric to use up. I pieced two 7x14 pieces together to end up with a 14x14 square. (All finished measurements, in case you're wondering how that worked.) Then I sewed the squares together, alternating the seam from horizontal to vertical so that two seams never met.

I didn't keep careful track, but I am quite sure that I did not buy any new fabric for this quilt. It helps when you get a boatload of black to work with and the rest of the pieces can use small scraps. But I did approach the quilt with an attitude of using what I had and seeing what I could make of it.

Size: 91" square
Started: September 2017
Finished: August 2019
Batting: wool
Pattern: centre based on the Pecking Order quilt by Missouri Star Quilt Company. I designed the rest, including borders.