I'm now on a tear to finish the Tropical Birds stitchy/quilty project that had been progressing nicely to completion as per last week's article.
At that time, the inner borders were quilted with the outer border and center to come. The outer border gained a squiggly-ripply free motion fill pattern that you can see below from the front and from the back.
In the center stitchy area, I used the walking foot to outline the large design areas. Just enough to define the shapes and preserve some of the puff.
To decrease the puff-factor in the white background areas, I felt like this still needed something.
I decided to stick with the walking foot to add equally spaced vertical lines in the unstitched background areas. This involved a fair amount of stopping and starting. Some line segments are only 2-3 stitches long, leaving a lot of thread ends to secure and tuck between the layers.
Had I been in a rush to finish, this step would have been a bit stressy, but I took my time. It took three hour-long sewing sessions to complete the task in this small area (about 5x10"), including all the square knots and thread tucks at the beginning and end of each line segment.
I'm pleased with the final result. Kinda looks like rain, maybe.
With the quilting complete, it was time to move on to the binding.
I considered making a piped binding using one of my favorite quilting tools.
Then decided on a different direction.
I trimmed the quilt layers . . .
Then attached the binding to the front of the quilt.
I went a bit rogue and cut the binding strips extra wide at 3-1/4" and did the usual double fold binding.
To accommodate the extra width, I used a 1/2" seam to attach the binding.
Next step is to secure the binding fold to the back of the quilt.
. . . AND . . . What was the idea to replace the piping?
I ran out of time! You'll have to wait and see--next time!
Happy Stitching!
Head Hummingbird
Hummingbird-Highway.com
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