Montage Homage

I've used most if not all of the photos in the collection shown above as I've marked year after year the anniversary of my husband's death on July 5, 2000 on this blog, but I don't think I've ever shared this grouping. I put it together as a special memory of our adventures on our Harley 750 Sportster. There were short hops and day trips and weekend jaunts to nearby motorcycle road races and week-long vacations sightseeing our way through Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and even parts of Canada. I told him we couldn't afford it when he came home from the dealership marveling at his opportunity to buy the bike when the person who said they wanted it changed their mind - normally there was a long waiting list to get one but he happened to be right there when the dealer lost that potential sale. I knew he was going to figure out how to buy it anyway, and I never regretted it, making sure he knew I expected to be taken along on many a ride. We had marvelous times on that machine and where it took us.

So the photo montage was put together so I could print it on fabric to make a journal quilt. I cut a border from the "checkered flag" sleeves of one of his Harley t-shirts and added a little quilting as well as various pins we picked up along the way. It never fails to warm my heart when I see these photos and remember how much he loved that bike . .  and me of course, never minding my tagging along. Loved you then, sweetie, and love you still.

Someone Knows Me Too Well...

This envelope arrived in yesterday's mail. I couldn't imagine what my friend was sending me - it felt like a sheaf of newspaper clippings, or maybe some fabric. But no - it is real birch bark that she peeled off a tree near her home. because it made her think of me and my "affinity to birch trees." I've peeled small strips on occasion, but have never been able to get the big pieces like this. Thanks!


Oh, and she added that I don't have to use it. Mmm, maybe she doesn't know me well. I've experimented with different ways to attach birch bark to cloth because I'd like to incorporate real bark on a piece I have in mind. The picture above is my January 2004 journal quilt trying one method that I didn't care for (fusible web - the heat of the iron turned the white surface tan). Is this the prod I need to haul out the fabric and proceed?

Katmandu-in'

This is for my friend, LeAnn, who keeps pointing out to me the ads for Mark Lipinski's "Katmandu" line of fabrics. "What do you think of this," she asks, "fabric designed specifically for embellishment?" I'm not sure what segment of the quilting population this is aimed at, but my inital reaction has been, "clever marketing ploy." LeAnn recently pointed out that Keepsake Quilting catalog has put together a "bead palette" to go with the fabric, another clever marketing ploy. At a different stage in my creative journey, I'm sure I would have bought some of this fabric and given it a try. Now I simply say: Interesting but not my cup of tea at the moment (although that beading palette did tempt me).

Then I remembered I'd done something like this exactly four years ago. Pictured above is my journal quilt I dubbed, "Aboriginal Comes to America" which showcases a swatch of Australian fabric. Not knowing what else to do with this quirky little piece, I hit upon using it as a beading sampler, and used Rachel Clark's method of "reading the fabric" to determine what beads to put where. This was so much fun, and also proved to me that every color is important; I'd nearly given those orange beads away, sure I'd never use them on anything. (Click on the picture see the details better.)

It's the same principal as the Katmandu fabric, really. Below is one of those ads so you can compare my version to theirs. And of course, you don't need to use Katmandu fabric; any pattern that speaks to you can be beaded and embellished to your heart's content.

I should note, while the ad shows embellishing the fabric using a hoop, I embellished mine after layering with batting and backing. The beading took the place of any quilting stitches, and I did not need to hoop it.

December Journal Quilt

Here is the final journal quilt of the year, the last of the series based on themes and quotations from a 2004 calendar entitled "Simplicity: Inspirations for a Simpler Life." December's theme is "Insight" and the quotation from Aldous Huxley: "The smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen." I didn't have to think twice about what I would use to interpret this. I'd saved an article from the September 2007 issue of Quilters Newsletter by Margit Morawietz about "Folds, Pleats, and Tucks" which showed how to manipulate pleats to reveal diamonds of fabric - a little like Cathedral Windows blocks. I didn't expect to see "the infinite" through my "windows" but at least I might gain some insight into a new dimensional technique.

I started by picking two fabrics: the green would be my main fabric and the multicolor batik my contrasting fabric to be revealed. Here also you see the magazine article with Margit's intriguing quilt using this technique.

Her measurements struck me as a bit fussy, so I rounded them off a bit. Essentially, you cut the fabric to be revealed twice the width of the top fabric and add 1/2" for seam allowance. In my case that meant 2-1/2" strips of the batik and 1-1/2" strips for the green. I cut the two outer green strips slightly wider to allow some wiggle room in case things shrank in the stitching.

These strips were alternated and sewn together into what looks like a stripset. I figured accurate straight seams were important, so used my trick of pressing a small PostIt note pad next to the presser foot as a guide.

Next, seams are pressed open. I used another trick of mine - draping the piece over a tailor's seam or sleeve roll. This effectively keeps the seams on either side of the one I was working on out of the way of the iron.

Here's the pressed strip set ready for the next step - folding and pleating.

It's difficult to get a picture of this first fold, but if you look at the top, what I've done is folded back the green strip right along the seam line. Each seam line gets the same treatment.

Now for the pleating. Margit likens this to box pleats you find in skirts (maybe you have to be of a certain age to remember those?). I finger-pressed a short fold on either end of the batik strip to mark the center of it. Then the fold along the seam is brought over to that line and the pleat it forms pressed into place. This was a tedious and time-consuming task, I discovered.

To hold the pleats in place for the next steps, it was necessary to pin, then sew lines of basting across them.

Here is where the process started breaking down for me. Normally, this pleated section would be inserted into a larger quilt top design. In this journal quilt, it WAS the whole design. Before doing the tucking part, I was supposed to "complete" the quilt, i.e., layer it, quilt it and bind it. The pleated section was to have no quilting on it. Well, that wouldn't do, so I set my machine to an undulating decorative stitch, put in some gold metallic thread and stitched two horizontal quilting lines that divided the top into 3 more or less equal sections. I sewed on binding to hold the edges in place, but didn't totally complete it because of the way I print a label and fuse it on as backing once I've completed all the sewing on my journal quilts. I still had technique to work through, so was lacking all the information I would want to put on the label. I also wasn't sure if I'd be doing more stitching all the way through the layers. If so, I wouldn't want that happening over the label and obscuring the information there. I'd just have to hope I could continue on.

Up to this point, the directions had been very detailed, but now that I needed specific information, the directions went general: "Using a thread color of your choice, tack the edges together with a few stitches..." I could see from the photos what I was to do, but there was no suggestion of how to secure those tacking stitches. I tried several things, and eventually realized I could leave the knot on the front because it would be hidden once the tuck was taken and stitched. A backstitch along the side of the tuck followed by pulling the thread through the loop to knot it didn't show much, and I could pull the thread end into the fold. Nowhere could I see that you were to run any stitches all the way through - the entire pleated and tucked section just sits on top of the batting and backing unsecured. I am really uncomfortable with that.

But what bothered me even more was the way the whole piece buckled as soon as I tacked a tuck. My three sections, as you can see below, undulate like swells on an ocean. The thimble placed in one of the "windows" gives you an idea of how deep they are. I don't think this will flatten out with ironing - if it does, I think it will change the look of the tucks to something undesirable.

Bottom line: This is far more dimension than I am comfortable with. It uses a lot of fabric and takes a lot of time to sew and press. And unless I missed something, I can't imagine how you could ever have a nice flat and well-hanging quilt inserting this kind of dimensional accent. I doubt that this is something I will ever use. As always, clicking on any picture will pull up a larger view.

Judi's November Journal Quilt

I almost hesitate to post this picture of Judi's November Journal Quilt because, well, it's so dang good! There are times when she really shows me up - but I am not jealous, really. We each have our strengths, and freely share our experiences and expertise with each other. Our friendship has helped both of us grow and be better artists.

These psychedelic llamas were inspired by photos taken by a co-worker on a trip to Machu Picchu. She's already made a larger, more elaborate piece with these charming llamas, and now she's thinking she'd like to make a series of smaller ones like this.

Judi used fused applique on this piece, and chose the background fabric because of its grass-like design, then free-motion machine quilted it. At present, she's having some tension problems with her machine, which apparently made quite a mess on the back of the quilt. So she fused another piece of fabric onto the back to cover it up. A single fold binding finishes the piece. Be sure to click on the picture for a better view of the detail.

November Journal Quilt

On the surface, there's not much about this month's journal quilt that would indicate a tie to the monthly calendar theme of Faith. However, the quotation that goes with it may shed some light: "No ray of sunlight is ever lost, but the green which it wakes into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted to the sower to live to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith..." - Albert Schweitzer. And so I hope it is with this piece - begun in faith that somewhere down the line, the seeds of ideas sewn here will grow and blossom months from now and be worth this trial.

The harvest theme seemed the perfect place to start my experimentation with the palette suggested by the dry grass and ferns along the bike trail punctuated by white berries and red rosehips (see this post). Here is where I began pulling fabrics to match those colors.

At this point I didn't have a design or pattern in mind. By the time I decided to work with it in the journal quilt, I was tired from a trip, preoccupied with my dog's health, and not in much of a mood to work up an elaborate design. Crazy piecing with my scraps seemed a simple approach to see how these colors might work together.

Here's the fabric I worked with. Notice some are leftover strip sets from other projects. Scissors and a rotary cutter would do the cutting, finger pressing the ironing.

I started by cutting a small triangle and randomly sewing fabric around it, trimming as I went.

Some got white triangle, some red. I soon realized that there wasn't enough white and started adding slices from a strip set that had white in it.

Because I wasn't foundation piecing, my blocks were coming out odd sizes. Eventually, I had to decide on a size and square them up as any other method of fitting them together would have been more work than I wanted at the moment. If I were to do this again, I'd do more placement planning and not have block divisions.

To make this fit the journal dimension, I ended up making 4 different sizes of blocks. I played a bit with arrangement, but again, was frustrated by the limitations the random placement had created.

Here's the back - lots of seams with this kind of work. At first I tried pressing seams open, but that soon became a liability; pressing seams to the outside for the most part worked best.

I was at a bit of a loss as to how to quilt it, thinking I'd mimic the plant stems and branches with wavy crossing lines in brown. I fused Decor Bond to my batting, then spray basted the top to the batting so I could quilt this with a walking foot and not worry about shifting.

Since I finished this it has grown on me, but initially, I wasn't that happy with the outcome. The red does not pop like I thought it would, and I wished there was more of it. (This could have been remedied with red garnet stitch quilting or addition of beads, but I wasn't willing to put in the extra time). That's probably why I opted for this bright red binding, which is just 1/8" wide. I also wish I'd cut the starter triangles larger - again, not enough pop for my money.

If nothing else, this was instructional: I have since thought of better designs to work with. Well, maybe not better, but ones more suited to my style and need for a little more control. I can see the potential of this color palette with the red accent. I think this is a seed worth planting and now I just have to have faith and patience about where it will grow from here. Mostly I am pleased that I didn't let my unexpected inspiration from a few weeks ago fade away or be pushed to the bottom of my priorities untried.

Judi's October Journal Quilt

It's journal quilt time again, but before I show you what I've been working on for November, I wanted to share my journal partner's journal quilt from October. It's another recreation in fabric of a photo (see below) - one Judi took while hiking near her new home in Oregon. I didn't get a lot of details about her process, but she mentioned that the new technique she tried was using a water soluble stabilizer laid over the top of the finished top with no hooping. She drew her quilting lines right on it, quilted away, then soaked the piece to remove the stabilizer. Her only disappointment was a slight bit of color bleeding from the green hand dyed fabric. So if you decide to use water soluble anything, you really need to be sure all your fabrics are colorfast.

She's thinking she'll probably frame this rather than finish it out like a traditional quilt. I think both the original photo and the quilt are fabulous!

October Journal Quilt

I worked on my journal quilt this weekend...what a concept, completing October's quilt in October! Been awhile since there hasn't been a conflict on the regularly scheduled Saturday. Also been awhile since my journal partner has been able to join in, but she too found she could work on a journal quilt this weekend. Will post her results later.

I struggled a bit with this month's calendar theme of Awareness, not because I couldn't think of a way to portray it, but rather because most of the ideas I was coming up with were merely rehashing of things I'd already tried. And I have a rule about journal quilts being a place to try out new things, stretch myself, not merely be a place for practice. The Thomas Mann quotation that went along with the theme emphasized the importance of this: "Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment." I'd need to find something worthy to work on. But I couldn't think of anything new I wanted to try. Could I really have explored all I wanted to explore?

Hardly. I remembered the copy of "Exploring Textile Arts" sitting on my shelf and pulled it down. Within just a few pages, the juices were flowing again and I found several things that excited me. I eventually settled on Random Fabric Weaving. The book showed examples using curved strips, but I thought perhaps I could simplify things by cutting my strips with straight edges. It was suggested to sketch out the weaving design to get a sense of how wide to cut the strips and how many might be needed. Here's mine with a little addition of colored pencils

Then it was on to fabric selection. My work table is still laden with fabric used or considered for the angel quilt and my eye went to the one used for the angel's tunic. I thought it might make interesting vertical strips and started pulling other fabrics based on those I saw in it. But it wasn't long until I ran across another fabric I thought would work better. The tunic fabric got set aside, but it was a good place to start.

Here I'm cutting the 1/2 inch strips for the "warp." I had an idea that they could mimic the warp threads in pin weaving - another method in the book that I considered.

These were pinned over a piece of Decor Bond (fusible side up). Then I started cutting wider, angled pieces from my selection of fabrics, and the weaving began. Because all edges were straight, I didn't have to stack fabric in order to get nesting edges. However, I found the weaving took a lot of time partly because the strips weren't easily nesting. I did a lot of pinning for the first few rows. Once all the weaving was complete, I applied a hot iron to start the fusing process, then flipped the piece over to finish fusing from the back.

This was as far as I got the first day. We're not supposed to work on these more than one day, but I'd wasted half of my day just coming up with an idea, then the weaving process took much longer than I anticipated. So Sunday afternoon found me completing the quilting. Because of the raw edges, each strip needs to be sewn down along each edge. I tried to adapt a meandering stitch so I'd only have to make one pass down each "row" where strips abutted, but I couldn't come up with an adjustment that pleased me. I tried several other bridging type stitches, but everything was too heavy, too much visually. If I'd been smart, I would have wound some of the YLI 40wt cotton quilting thread I'd chosen onto a bobbin so I could have used a twin needle. But for some reason I decided that was too much work along with then having to adjust tension. So I made two passes and spent nearly 3 hours quilting this! Oh, another thing that made it take longer was the fact that in the middle of the piece, I changed the weaving pattern so that the yellow strips straddled two warp strips and I didn't want to stitch through that. So there was a lot of starting and stopping as you can see from this picture of the back (click on any picture for a larger view). I used the "fix" function on my machine, which merely stitches back and forth very closely for a few stitches before taking off. I don't normally like to use this because I don't trust that it truly fixes the stitch and partly because it usually leaves a mess like this on the back. But no way was I going to spend time pulling threads to the back, tying and burying them. I finished off the edge with a standard butted binding in the same fabric as the vertical strips.

Although I like the way this turned out, especially the design created by the wedge shapes, there were several things I didn't like about the method itself. Primarily, it was so time consuming that I couldn't help thinking it would have been easier and faster to get the same effect with a piecing technique. I also didn't like dealing with the occasional fraying. I know some use this method by applying a fusible to the fabric before cutting, and I can see the merit in that approach. Perhaps I'll try the curved strips in a larger format and see if it produces an effect that I feel could not easily be achieved another way.

September Journal Quilt

My journal partner, Judi, is quickly settling into her new surroundings, and tells me she even set up her machine and turned it on. Hopefully she'll be able to journal with me in October. In the meantime, my schedule busied up, and Monday was the soonest I could get going on my September effort. "Direction" was the calendar theme with this quotation from Henry David Thoreau: "Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence." I have to admit, that was intimidating. Was it an indictment of how I've spent my time? It seemed to be demanding that I take a good hard look at my creative journey and make a decision about which of many paths I've pursued I should now concentrate on. And once I figure that out, just how would I interpret that in a journal quilt?

One realization I've come to recently is that I may have been fooling myself about ever getting comfortable with and really good at a certain kind of freemotion quilting. I'm ready to admit that no amount of practice will get me to the technical level of expertise that will satisfy me. I just don't think this is one of my strengths, although I can do it well enough to get by when I have to. However, I don't want to just get by. I want to truly enjoy the process while producing high quality work, and neither has been happening. Although I don't think of myself as a follower of the crowd, I'd convinced myself over the years that if I were to be a part of the modern quilting world and "play" with the big girls (and a few boys too!), I simply had to do this kind of freemotion quilting that everyone else was doing. So I tried, and I practiced, and I struggled, and about the only part of it that worked for me was when I reverted to "heirloom" quilting to mimic antique hand-quilted quilts, or when I worked with small motifs. Everything else just left me slightly disappointed. My recent play with feeddogs-up quilting of closely spaced parallel lines, on the other hand, has been very satisfying and enjoyable and a "narrow" path I think I need to pursue with "love and reverence," not apology.

As the last few posts have indicated, I've also re-discovered my love of geometric shapes that hearkens back to my simple traditional quilt block background. One picture from The Magazine Antiques kept calling to me to work with it. The wood grain lines in this closeup of Shaker furniture reminded me of my closely spaced quilting lines. The quotation, I decided, was calling out for me to get back to basics, to a kind of quilting that got me interested in the medium to begin with, and adapt it to my current interest in art quilts.

What I ended up with is a fairly literal interpretation of the original picture, using my favorite color palette, but the methods I explored were slightly different from what I've been doing. I was thinking in terms of my Grid series where I started appliqueing squares of fabric to a background fabric instead of piecing them into the top. But this time, I couldn't see any point in finding two different fabrics to work with. I could still satin stitch around the basic shapes, but I'd used thread to shift the color of a single fabric to make it look like two. (I experimented with this idea with my April journal quilt here & here.) I'm giving in to the allure of beautiful threads in the same way I long ago gave in to the beauty of batiks and hand-dyed fabrics.

I started by pulling out graph paper, ruler and pencil. Once I'd settled on the framing and proportions, I transferred my pattern on to Golden Needles Quilting paper. This is like dress pattern paper or tissue paper which comes in a roll and in two widths. You can sew right through it and it tears away nicely. I figured this would be easier than drawing the main lines directly on the fabric.

I sprayed the back of it lightly with Sulky K2000 temporary basting spray so that it would stick to the master pattern while tracing and to the fabric as I sewed through it. (Word of caution here. I only used the Sulky because I have a little left and I abhor waste. I've not had good luck with it overall and much prefer the 505 Basting spray. But I figured for this project, I could get away with using it.)

I fused Decor Bond to the back of my fabric to stabilize it since I planned to do most of the "wood grain" stitching before layering for quilting. Once I stitched the main lines, the pattern was removed. Here you can see how I use a seam ripper to slide along the perforation to more easily and completely remove the paper. Any tiny pieces left behind can be picked out with tweezers. I particularly like to use the ones that came with my serger.

Now came the fun part, although I bet most of you will think this must have been boring. Again, with feeddogs up, I first ran straight stitches in the "background" areas, using the presser foot as a guide to keep the lines about 1/16 inch apart. My intention was not to have perfectly spaced lines, but to have them vary slightly. I've tried both on other projects, and it is exceedingly hard to keep those line spacings perfect. Actually, I think the slight varying looks better and more interesting. The thread used on this first pass is Oliver Twist Hand-dyed cotton thread.

The second pass in the "drawer" sections was done with a King Tut variegated thread. I was hoping for a little more contrast, a little more of a golden tone, but I decided subtle in this case was ok. This thread on this fabric made it look very tweedy. I could see using this effect on fabric for clothing or handbags.

Yes, I could have done this stitching with the feeddogs up, but it wouldn't have been nearly as relaxing to do, the stitches would have been uneven, which would have bothered me, and I might have had some distortion afterwards which would have been hard to flatten out. I also could have done this stitching after layering with batting; it would have given more texture almost like corduroy wales, but I wanted a flat look instead. The batting would be held in place with the satin stitching outlines of the drawers (done with polyneon thread). The satin stitching also covered up the "traveling" stitch at the end of each line of stitching that allowed me to sew continuously up and down over each section.

I wished that I had allowed more excess fabric beyond the 8-1/2 x 11 finished size. If I had, I think I would have done a facing again like I did last month. I really don't like satin stitching the edge, but I didn't want to do binding either. So I thought perhaps I could make my peace with satin stitching this time around. (It irks me that it really takes two rounds and a ton of thread to get proper coverage, and I especially have trouble turning corners neatly.) I must have tried half a dozen different colors of thread, none of which I liked. I finally settled on this yellow King Tut, reminding myself that this is just a journal quilt, after all. Still, I like to have a decent finish on each that I do. I'd toyed with the idea of couching something along the edge instead, but found I didn't have anything thick enough. It did unearth some hand-dyed threads and cordings, one of which I'd have used for sure had it not been so thin. Now I wondered if I could couch it on next to the satin stitching as a bridge and defining line. It was just what I needed to do to be able to live with the yellow thread.

Here is the special braiding/cording foot that helped apply this. It has a guide to keep the cord centered so you don't have to pay much attention to it as you zig zag over it. This, I think, is a pearle cotton twisted with a gold metallic, and the thread used to couch it down is a smoke monofilament thread. I was glad I took the time to do this. It made me realize that I could use this method instead of inserting piping along the binding seam like I do so often these days. One more option...

This was extremely hard to photograph and scan, which accounts for the variety of shades the work changes to from picture to picture. To see more detail, click on any picture for a larger view. I should mention that I fused a second backing on after the quilting was done and before I satin stitched the edge. This serves as a label, and the WonderUnder not only helps the fabric feed smoothly through my printer, but adds a stiffness to the piece. I like the combination of Decor Bond and WonderUnder to give these smaller pieces extra body so they can almost stand up on their own, making them easier to display.

August Journal Quilt

Normal journal day would have been last weekend when I was away for my birthday. I returned home from that trip to the moon rising over the lake, casting its reflection in the calm waters, and I was reminded again how blest I am to have found this magical spot. So as the week progressed, and I contemplated how to interpret August's calendar theme of Wisdom with a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, that image of the moon came to mind. As per the quotation: "The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common." I had extra motivation to work on my journal quilt Saturday; my jounal buddy Judi, who has had to put her own journaling on hold until she gets settled out in Oregon, was passing through just an hour from me and we'd arranged to meet. I'd be able to show her this and the rest of the year's journal quilts in person - what a treat!

I started with some photos I'd taken earlier when I was more interested in capturing the color of the relection than getting a good sharp picture. Yes, no time to set up a tripod so the pictures are a bit blurred. I narrowed it down to these two shots, neither of which were composed exactly right, but which had elements I wished to incorporate.

Using my Paintshop Pro program, I reduced these to black & white, then applied a "black pencil" effect to bring out the main shapes only.

Next I auditioned fabric choices. The blue for the lake is some sort of synthetic dress material with a slight sheen which I hoped would make it look more like water. I changed my mind later about the fabric for the foreground, as you will see.

One of the things I wanted to experiment with was YLI's Brilliance thread. It is a metallic that glows in the dark and I have never fully come to terms with it. I'm thinking of using it in the angel quilt, so this seemed like a good place to work through my previous problems with it. I would use it to embroider the moon and reflection and these two colors were as close as I could get to matching those in the photo.

As I often do, I combined several methods to suit my needs. While I planned to use the Accidental Landscape method (see this post and this post) to create the top, that polyester fabric was ravelly and would not hold a crease when trying to press under its raw edge. I needed to stabilize the areas where I'd be free-motion stitching the moon and reflection. So I decided to try fusing the various sections to Decor Bond.

I wanted some guidelines, though, for fabric placement. I didn't want this landscape to be very accidental. Decor Bond is translucent enough for my b&w printout to show through. I used a permanent black Sharpie to draw the finished size of the journal quilt on the Decor Bond, then moved the printout underneath until I had the orientation I wanted. I used the Sharpie to mark the outlines of the foreground, lake, mountain, first on the fusible side (since I did not reverse my b&w version before printing it), then again on the other side. The polyester & sky fabric went down first, my teflon pressing sheet protecting the iron from the exposed fusible. I cut a freezer paper template of the mountain section to help guide turning under both edges, then positioned using the marked guides on the Decor Bond and fused. The foreground was cut freehand, trying to capture a bit of the ragged line grass produces, and pressed under before fusing. Because of the overlaps, those pressed under edges are loose.

Here is how it looked after stitching the moon and reflection. If you look closely (click on any picture for a larger view), you can see that the edges of the mountain and foreground are not sewn down yet - that will be part of the quilting. The camera is not lying about the color of the thread, by the way. For as different as each thread looked on the spool, it was difficult to see any difference between them on the fabric. And I think the #80 metallic needle may not have been big enough because I still had some problems with tension.

The last step was to layer the top with Thermore polyester batting and muslin and quilt it. I started with the loose edges, free-motion topstitching close to the turn under with smoke monofilament thread. And partly because I was feeling lazy and partly because I wanted to keep it simple, I continued to add minimal quilting lines using that same monofilament thread. Here's the quilting as seen from the back.

There was one other thing I wanted to try on this quilt and that was a faced edge finish. I'm seeing this on more and more art quilts where adding a binding ruins the overall effect. For you readers familiar with clothing construction it is like adding a facing to a neckline or armhole. I followed some basic instruction shared by Alison Schwabe here which is her solution to finishing irregularly shaped quilts. It's a lot like the pillow turn method, except after turning, the center of the "facing" is cut away, leaving around an inch of facing to secure to the back of the quilt, and then the facing is understitched to the seam allowance. This helps keep the facing from rolling to the front.

I had some success with this, but I think I should have clipped the corners (which were difficult to poke out) and graded the seam since I had the extra stiffness of the Decor Bond in there. Although the picture above of the finished quilt shows nice straight even edges, the real thing is less perfect. Let's here it for cropping! That is basically my issue with any edge finish I've tried other than binding. I simply can't get that evenness that is my aesthetic. I know there's another way to do a facing, and before I totally write it off, I'll have to dig it up and give it a go, because frankly, I do like the look it gives to certain pieces.