Summer Flowers in the Field

It's done! Now all I have to do is hang it on the wall. I was calling this "my scrappy triangle flowery wallhanging thing," but then I thought I'd go a bit more hoity-toity, so "Summer Flowers in the Field" it is. I crack myself up.



I finished it last night, putting on the binding while watching Top Chef. Gawd, that show makes me want to EAT so I was glad to have something else to keep my hands busy. I'm not a hand sewer of bindings. Gimme my machine all the way, baby! ;-) I tossed it in the washer last night and the dryer this morning so I could have that puckery goodness. I love a puckery quilt. It looks less puckery in these photos than IRL but I think that's because shrinking the pics to more web-friendly size lost some of the contrast/definition. Trust me. It's plenty puckered.

This binding is one of my most successful to date, I think. Usually, I will wuss out and just use a small ZZ on the front so I'm sure the back of the binding is caught. I match thread to binding and you really can't even tell unless you're looking for it. I'm not entering quilt shows or anything.

But I decided I want to master binding a quilt by machine so I forced myself to do it the right way with no shortcuts. My tips: Lots of pins and a walking foot. And this YouTube video. Notice how she's constantly pushing the seam allowance more open as she stitches in the ditch? Do that.

I still had a couple of spots where I missed the back but that's because I joined some of the binding pieces straight instead of using bias seams and they made the binding more lumpy. But I was seriously eeking out the last scraps of these stripes and a bias seam would've eaten up too much of my smaller pieces. I know better, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do. It wasn't a big deal to do a second pass where I missed. It's going on the wall. Even I'll never see it.

The quilting itself is nothing special. Mostly just in the ditch, but I did echo the flowers and greenery. Also on my list to master is free motion. I'm OK. But I need more practice.



And, speaking of my sewing room … Oh? We weren't? Well, now we are. ;-) Here's yet ANOTHER photo of my IKEA shelves. I found some bins that work for me. They look basket-y but they're really plastic. I'll need to put labels on them or draw myself a map because with all this reorganization, I CAN'T FIND A THING! But I'm slowly getting used to where my stuff is. Oh, and those 4 bins on the bottom? Those are the ones that used to have blue/yellow lids. Krylon Fusion for plastic rocks!



I also got these smaller rattan baskets. There are 4 of them but you can't see the last one since it's blocked by my cutting table. I'm going to make liners for these — first, because the baskets are kind of rough and second, to keep the green thing going for the lower half of this unit.



While I'm still in quilt-mode, I'm going to try to knock out a quick table runner for my sister for Christmas. Yes, I'm in shock too. I usually never even think about Christmas until December. But I still have scraps I'm determined to use up and this will go fast. I might even make one for myself. I'm going to join in the August Create-With-Me sew-along on UCreate, here. UCreate is a great blog, BTW. Lots and LOTS of crafty ideas. Fill up your coffee cup before you click on that link. I'm just sayin'…