Yesterday, I found a few hours to retreat to my studio and was actually able to finish my orange challenge piece…..
I am totally thrilled with the way this piece turned out and much of the credit goes to my husband!!!!
When I was getting ready to do the quilting in the blank areas I was thinking about making the lines radiate from the center. He suggested that straight lines would look better and I made the decision to break the lines up.
I showed him the finished product and was talking about how I was going to finish the quilt….binding or facing etc. He asked if there was any way to put a yarn or other 3-dimensional edging on it. I was intrigued!!!
I pulled out my old yarn box and look what was in the corner……
Next step was to do a Google search and see how other people “bind” a quilt with yarn. After reading two or three methods, I headed back to the studio to try them out.
The first one was couching the yarn on the edge of the quilt……
I wasn’t particularly impressed with the look.
Next was to try couching the yarn on first and then cutting away the edges. This time I used 3 strands of yarn twisting them as I went……
I liked the look of this better so began the process of couching the yarn along the edge of the border…..
As I got to the end, I cut both sets of yarn at various lengths…..
…and held them down as I stitched.
After carefully trimming the edges of the quilt close to the yarn, I returned to the machine to zig-zag around the edge one more time.
When I turned the corners I used a trick that I have mentioned here before, but didn’t have good photos, so here are the instructions…..
As I approached the corner, I used a needle and thread to stitch “handles” onto the quilt……
After I turned the corner, I used the thread to pull the quilt along, keeping it from getting stuck under the presser foot (the walking foot helped a lot too)…..
The threads simply pull out and can be used on the next corner.
Now, this final photo SHOULD go without saying, but always be careful about what is under your fabric when you are rotary cutting…..
…oooopppppssssss!!!
3 thoughts on “A Saturday Finish”
It's fabulous!
Gorgeous! The yarn on the edge was meant to be. The color is just perfect.
It looks fantastic and the edging is great. Yhanks for the reminder about the handles. Now if all of us who are quilters were only tidy as well we wouldn't have minor mishaps like that :))