I know I’m not the only one who loves making quilt tops, and even doing the quilt design on the Avante Long Arm that I own. But why is it so difficult to actually finish off the binding so I can say “done, complete, finished?”
I have all sorts of excuses, or shall we say reasons, as to why not to do the hand-stitching on the binding. As you see in this picture the binding is stitched on by machine, but then I always like to do the reverse of the binding by hand, using an invisible ladder stitch. It takes just so long to motivate myself.
https://alanteatherquilting.com/how-to-join-binding-the-atq-way/
Having said that I have just spent 4 days hand-stitching a customer’s quilt that is a 100” x 100”. The picture above of the Carpenter’s Star quilt that I made 4 months ago is a mere baby in comparison at 75” square.
This was a relatively easy quilt to make. But having said that I have been quilting 16 years on and off and this is with a 10” layercake. So big quilts go fast.
The patterned fabric is Fresh of the Vine layercake by Holly Taylor for Moda Fabrics. The cream that I have used for the background is just a simple cream of a bolt that I stock in the shop.
When I was doing this I wanted to have a long arm quilted design that would stand out on the cream but the thread to disappear into the patterned areas. The intention of that was so that the cream parts had a lot of detail and talking points but, conversely, the patterned star pieces would also show up because there was no thread showing.
The pattern I used on the long arm was Blossom Cluster E2E from the HQ design tab. The thread used was Aurifil 40wt Dark Carmine Red. The border fabric is from the Best of Morris Fall collection by Moda, the binding is a simple green fabric.
The reverse is a beautiful green from 108” wide backing fabric. Because I didn’t want to be a feature on the back but still wanted the pattern I matched the green to a green thread which was Aurifil 2890, 40wt, Very Dark Grass Green.
Because I sell a wide range of waddings in my shop, I had a wonderful dilemma as to what wadding to use, so for this on I took the chance on using 100% bamboo wading which I have never used before; but this is really nice to use. It’s got a medium loft more than the standard 80/20 wadding but not as much as the 100% pure wool.
One day I might even get the binding done!!