FINISHED…..REALLY!!

Yesterday I fooled you and said that it was finished, but really, I needed to redo the binding so that the bottom-right corner looked better.

Don’t EVER do this unless you absolutely can’t stand it the way it is.

One of the hardest things that I have ever done was to rip that binding off…..

I knew that I was going to need to add a bit more binding so that I would have room to finish it off when it met up on the other side.

The problem was that I didn’t have much fabric left and this was the longest strip that I could make!!

Then….when I sat down to re-attach it…..THIS HAPPENED…..

Remember also, that this was the day that I was packing for our 3-week trip to Africa so there were LOTS of things on my To-Do list. I didn’t have time for this particular problem!!

Once I had worked around both corners, I folded and check the errant corner before I connected the binding…..

That is definitely an improvement.

When I rounded the corner to attach the two bindings together, I ended up with three connects really close together. I don’t particularly like it, but I can’t change it now.

SO….. after an evening of handwork, I can call this quilt officially finished!!!

Now I am taking photos (including a ruler to show that it is exactly 20-inches)…..

…..and filling out the registration form. And of course….paying my $30.

I hope that this quilt is accepted into the Cherrywood Challenge but regardless, I have had a BLAST working on it.

I guess that means that I can take down the “Monarch Challenge” sticker that has resided on my design wall since I came back from Houston with the fabrics!!

Thanks to all of you who have sewed along with me, offering encouragement and suggestions. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Does this mean that it needs to go into a “group” category????

Until next time…..

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EXACTLY 20-inch square

Yesterday I promised that I would finish the Monarch Challenge Quilt and, for the most part, I will…..

When I left you yesterday, everything was finished except for the binding.

But, before I could add binding, I needed to ensure that the quilt was going to be 20 inches square…..EXACTLY!!!

One of the big challenges of the Cherry Wood Challenge is that they have to be the EXACT size. You can understand that when you see the way that they are displayed…..

Now I had to figure out how I was going to finish the quilt…..if I used a facing, then the quilt would need to be cut at 20-1/2 inch because turning the facing will take away the 1/2 -inch.

However, IF I am going to bind the quilt, I need to trim it to 20-inches because once the binding is folded back over itself, it doesn’t take up any of the size.

Does that explanation make ANY sense???

Anyway….. I decided that a facing wouldn’t work well because of the bulk along the bottom where the leaves were. They would not have turned under well!!

So, after a lot of measuring, I carefully trimmed the quilt top, starting with squaring-up the bottom portion.

Then I measured up to the top-right corner and squared it further…..

Happily, it measured exactly 20-inches!!

I added the binding and set out to take photos so that I can enter it into the challenge.

What do you see when you look at this photo?

Does the bottom right corner stick out to you??

It certainly does to me and I feel sure that having such a bad (un-square) corner would immediately take me out of contention for acceptance.

So that means that there is ONE more thing to do before I can call this quilt finished…..

Come back on Tuesday and I PROMISE that it will be finished!!!

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Isn’t it finished yet??

For all of you who have toiled thru the Monarch challenge quilt process…..THANK YOU!!!

When I left you yesterday, I only had a small piece of fabric and needed to make as many flowers as possible out of it…..

I pulled out my wonder-under and started carefully fusing it to various shaped pieces of fabric…..

When I had crammed as many flowers and buds in as possible, I had 18 new flowers and almost as many buds…..

I carefully cut them out…..

……not wanting to lose ANY of the fabric!!

There wasn’t much left when I was thru…..

I decided that some of the smaller circle buds weren’t needed. Instead, I turned a lot of them into larger ovals!!

I fused them to the flower and started stitching them down. Now I had another supply problem as I was running out of thread…..

Will the problems EVER end??

I sewed down the new flowers and then added the double-sided ones……

I LOVED how it looked…..

OKAY….come back tomorrow and I PROMISE that the Monarch Challenge quilt will be finished!!!

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Monarch Continuation

On the weekend I posted about the quilting for the Monarch piece. You can check it out here…..

Now it was time to put the finishing touches so here we go……

The first step was to add the leaves and stems to the piece.

I decided to use all 5 of the leaves that I had made but thought it would look good if one of them ran off of the quilt…..

I pinned them in place…..

….and sewed down the middle of the leaf so that each one floated over the surface of the quilt…..

Next, I added the stem and stitched it in place…..

I had to do a bit more quilting on the background of the milkweed……

At this point, the flower looked okay…..

…..but it needed more flowers to fill it in further. I had already made some double-sided flowers that I was adding at the end, but I realized that I needed MORE!!

But there was a problem….

This was all of the white fabric that I had left…..

….and remember that I can’t use any other fabrics

……and there wasn’t time to order more!!!

WHAT TO DO?

Come back tomorrow…….

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Let’s talk Monarch’s!!

So, yesterday, I had the background finished and now it was time to think about the guest of honor….the butterfly!!

I found a great photo online and enlarged it to the size I wanted.

I started out by drawing the outline on a piece of black fabric and then roughly cutting it out.

Next, I added the wing bits…..

As I was trying to figure out how to add all of the small white areas, my friend Linda said “Why don’t you paint them??” At one point I thought I might do some painting on this quilt so I brought my paint supplies with me!!

It didn’t take long to paint the white spots. I decided to add a bit of grey to the edges to give them a bit more depth.

I also added a bit of green paint to the inner sections to give more depth there too.

Since I am NOT a painter, what I did was minimal but I think that it added a lot to the Monarch!!

Now it was time to tackle the Milkweed.

I brought this photo with me…..

….and used it as my guide.

Once again, I am going for depth so started with some paints on white fabric. I got excited doing this step and kept forgetting to take photos, but you can see it pretty well in this photo….

I started out with a sea sponge, then added brush strokes in green and then some brown as well.

Next, I used the photo and cut out lots and lots of flower shapes. The first set was fused onto the background and heavy embroidery threads were added to the centers. I also used a marker to add some more interest.

The next morning, I added a layer of batting to the back and another set of flowers…..this time sewing them on the machine….

I actually like those better than the hand-sewn ones but I think that the diversity will add to the design.

Once I saw that this idea was going to work okay, I cut out a bunch more flower shapes with fusible on the back and then also fused two fabrics together and cut out flowers that will be loose on the top.

Before I left for the retreat, I found a font that I liked and printed out the words. It was easy work to transfer them to the fusible web and cut them out of fabric. They didn’t show up well on the green background so I added a black fabric strip under them.

I will rough-cut the black before I fuse it down.

When I left the retreat, the quilt was at this stage…..