Sunday, March 6, 2011

Border town

I love borders...I think that a border really finishes off a quilt. I think I add borders to everything, sometimes two of them.  Only problem is I seem to have some issues with quilting them. Although I am getting better.
I bought a new pencil...
(oops, bad picture....you can see the one place that I ran out of material, and had to add a little piece to the border!)
The pencil is Roxanne's Quilter's Choice, and I really like it (That you Deb at Periwinkle's)  After studying my little free motion "primer" again, and decided on a pattern called "Fickle Feather Border"

The instructions say to sew up the "spine" first and then do the feathers on the way back down. So first I drew the spine on with my trusty new pencil....so far, so good......

Then the problems began! First of all....I can stitch in the ditch with my eyes closed, but do you think that I can sew on a long curvy line?  NO, I can't! I felt like I was in kindergarten trying to color inside the lines!! So the spines were pretty squiggly (is that a word??)  Then I started the feathers....my coloring inside the lines got worse! So I finally just did them free motion, which was easier for me.

I got better as I went along. I can see where a lot of practice will make a huge difference. By the end of the fourth side I was doing well.....If the quilt had six sides- I would be perfect !!

I did little patterns on the corners, and they turned our really nice. I love them. I seemed to do OK with a small pattern like this. Maybe I should just do smaller patterns along a border?
I have also had lots of suggestions to use paper or Press & Seal, and then draw on that and sew through it, so I might have to do some more experimenting with this.
Now on to the binding ....don't you just love a good adventure?

4 comments:

  1. I am loving sharing your quilting process. Feathers I have not mastered, hate to tell you what they look like to me! Gosh, soon you will be a master and taking orders. Well done.

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  2. I've never thought of using press and seal as a template. If it pulls away from the stitches cleanly that might be a very cool option.

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  3. Kelly you have lot of knowledge about quilting. Provided information is really very helpful, also it will help beginners. Nice blog I am waiting for next 

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  4. Butterfly quilting is accurate without any miss quilt. Thanks for sharing your great idea!!

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