Late Night Binding Adventures ---

Last night I was “Home Alone” --- DH is in Hickory for meetings for two days, and he’ll be home tonight. Jeff was off visiting with friends. ((Hanging OUT as he would prefer me to say --- get with the lingo, Mom!))

And I don’t know what hit me about 9pm, but I got this burst of energy to get the Winston Ways quilt trimmed up, and put some binding on it. It quilted up wonderfully, no problems at all with this one. No jammed bobbins, no broken needles with all those seam intersections ---my muse must have been with me with this one!

Here we are, all in the machine, quilting away! Maybe it was the brightness of the colors that kept me from being able to go to bed at a decent hour? Who knows?

I couldn’t decide what to bind it in, so I started pulling yardage. I thought black? No….there’s already a black inner border and it just didn’t look right. Blue or aqua? No…..not very often will I bind a quilt in the same fabric as the border, I didn’t have any more of that border fabric, and every blue or aqua that I tried didn’t look right either. There is obviously already ENOUGH Yellow/Gold in the quilt as it is, I didn't want that to define the edge as well.

The checkerboard units in the quilt are all scrappy reds…EVERY kind of red, even Christmas fabrics are in there. Hey, when there is only 1” of fabric showing, you can really push the limits on what can go in a quilt – because all you are going to see is COLOR! So --- Out came the trusty bag of 2.5” red strips.

Boy, have I LOVED having my strip stash divided by size AND by color family! I have to re-train myself to get in the habit of putting things away in the same way that I pulled them out of there – meaning it takes more time to wind things back up and put them in the bag before putting them in the drawer – but the effort is time and frustration saved in the long run. For instance --- I didn’t have to dig, sort and iron all the red strips as I would have had to if I were pulling them out of a messy “everything under the sun” drawer.

This morning’s back deck photo shoot was a bit chillier than yesterday! It’s not supposed to be as nice, and it looks like rain maybe – so glad I got this when I did, AND glad I took advantage of being out on the beautiful day yesterday! I think the scrappy red binding is going to be fun!

Here you can see the quilting a bit better. I used “Deb’s Swirls” by Deb Geissler. And my Kansas girls might remember gifting me with THIS fabric! Do you see Dorothy, part of the cowardly lion, the wicked witch, and the tin man’s hat?

I used most of these strips gifted with the “Welcome to Kansas” sign in this quilt! Dorothy said “There’s no place like home” And Winston-Salem has been my home for 4 years now, so working these scraps into this quilt was fun on many levels! Wanna see where they ended up?

There are Dorothy’s shoes, on the black background! It is so fun to put really crazy fabrics together!

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Here is the block with the “Yellow Brick Road” fabric!

Here are Dorothy’s shoes again on yellow!

There was a strip of witches on purple background in the poster above too --- I used THAT in the Midnight Flight quilt. Great memories, ladies! Thanks for the fabric momento! I’ll think about my September Kansas Adventure every time I see them!

Another close up of quilting detail. I DO LIKE! My only problem is --- there are now FOUR quilts on my sofa ready for me to do the hand stitching. Guess what I’ll be doing for the next while?

For those wanting to make this quilt, the block pattern is from Quiltmaker Magazine's 100 blocks by 100 designers, Vol 3. I'll be teaching this as a workshop during Quiltmaker's Block Party in Williamsburg, VA in August, and again in Portland, Oregon in March of 2013.

Today I’ve GOT to get the rest of my stuff ready for Yard Sale Saturday. It goes live tomorrow morning. Be watching for that post, and come link up with me if you have things you want to unload find a new loving home for! If you are new to participating, remember these are gently used “Yard sale” type quilty items. You can sell FQs, charms, fabric –strips, strings, UFOs, kits you don’t want, notions, books, sewing machines, ANYTHING quilting/sewing related, but they must be yard sale kind of things --- please no “new” retail or “made for the craft show and sold at full price” type items. More info in tomorrow morning’s post!

PS – I know this is a late post this morning, but that late night sewing, and a night with benedryl thanks to the SPRING POLLEN going around has me in a bit of a fog this morning --- it will get better as the day goes on, I’m sure!