The finished items from my de-stashing process

The table runner is definitely finished and hopefully now sitting gracefully down the middle of Leo and Mel’s dining table. It was put together with scraps of the fabrics I’d thought I was going to give to the Op Shop, but I am pleased it has become useful – and maybe even a beautiful collection of ‘saved’ fabrics. When I say saved, they have been in my collection for 25 years!

 

The second item turned out to be more trouble than I thought – and I started to wonder if it was worth it…let somebody else finish it off!!! At least it has now been assembled into one piece, backed and bound. They are the same furnishing fabrics, 9 inch square and half squares on each corner; (there is an equation for that: I think when cutting a square into half diagonally, add 7/8”?).  My de-stash box also had a roll of the most gorgeous heavy weight black ribbon with bight aqua polka dots which I’d bought on special for $2 years ago. I didn’t know how I would use it then, but a week or ago the penny dropped (probably at 3 in the morning)!

Instead of joining these heavy fabrics together with a seam, I decided to use spray-on craft glue to place them onto the bamboo batting. And then the inch-wide ribbon could be used to cover the raw edges. I ended up to feeling the need to run through lines of stitching once I’d found a suitable quirky, retro backing – again from my stash. Nothing new bought for these two quilts. More spray to attach the yellow and grey diamond backing – no pins involved. This is not the easiest process in my experience – though this was my first time to use the spray for a larger piece, I can’t say I approached it in the most rational way!!!

After attaching the squares, the strips of ribbon were attached (glued here too). Then my favourite binding was added, the red and beige tiny squares, which seems to really show off the colours in the big blocks. But, without any ‘internal’ quilting of each block, the finished item does not sit quite as flat as I would like it to. All quilters know that the flatter the better…and that leaves me wondering whether quilting within the squares would help, maybe with a simple machine stitched X across each block. I‘ve even thought about the possibility of doing some hand quilting around some of the shapes in the blocks. Woo, hand quilting… who, me? But, hey, when you set dishes on top of the cloth, it will sit flat, no? So, is this little quilt finished? Might have to wait for it to send out a message about what it thinks!