As a quilt - or any project - on my to-do list starts to reach a point at which completion is in sight, I start a mental countdown. X-number of blocks left to make. X-number of seams to sew. X-number of blocks and borders to quilt! Everything up until the final countdown is making. And making. And making.
It's all fun, but the finish is the prize!
For the Big Day Quilt project and my FLOCK blocks, I got very serious about the countdown this week. One by one, pins were removed from the blocks, blocks were quilted, and the number decreased by one. Repeat.
The Mountain bluebird, tick! The Bald Eagle, tick! The Canada Jay, tick!
And before you know it, all the blocks were done!
For the block backgrounds I used a small selection of free-motion fill patterns, my favorite being this innie/outie/random shape fill. It goes fast and looks nice.
I chose three or four basic thread colors depending on the background: blue, green, gray, tan, white.
The birds are mostly unquilted so they 'puff.'
Then it was time for the border. I test-drove some pattern ideas on a sample quilt sandwich and settled on this simple wiggly-line/corduroy pattern similar to the straighter version I used within the blocks in the tan block border areas.
It went pretty quickly. Tick! Done.
There is only one step in the entire soup-to-nuts process of making a quilt that makes me very nervous--trimming the batting and backing before adding the binding. A serious slip of the ruler here - you know what, I'm not going to go there, even in my head. But the rotary cutter at this point weighs more than at any other point in the process. And then it's time to bind. Tick!
I chose to use the same fabric as the border for my binding on this quilt. There is enough going on in the center of the quilt to keep the eye busy and contained.
And the final, final countdown is the number of sides of binding to secure, by hand--on a cool late summer/early fall evening - maybe not this week.
I confess. I'm a finisher, and I love the finish line and The Final Countdown!
Happy Stitching!
Head Hummingbird
Hummingbird-Highway.com
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