Yes, it only took me a total of nine years to complete the Stack A New Deck quilt that I started back in March of 2006. Yikes! After it was pieced I began hand-quilting it but didn't like the look. So it went into a little box and wasn't heard from again. When I needed a practice quilt to take with me to the Gammill longarm quilting rental center in Fort Collins, CO I found it again. Of course at that point I realized that my borders were out of control and wonky. Turns out that short-cutting the border attachment results in lots of waves. There's no way that would have quilted out in a nice way. So I ripped out the stitches, re-measured, PINNED and then sewed the borders back on. What a difference! This time they were flat and I was able to load the quilt top on the longarm with no problems back in January 2014.
This was the first time that I had tried using a computerized longarm quilting pattern. I chose Natalia Majors' Simple Waterdrops. It was a lot of fun but I never seemed to make the time to sew on the binding. Yes, once again this poor little wall-hanging went into a box until recently.
One of the guilds I belong to is having their SCVQA biannual quilt show at the Santa Clara Convention Center on March 14th and 15th. This marks their 40th anniversary so I really wanted to enter something. Out came that box of UFOs and finally this quilt got a binding attached.
This wasn't just any old binding, but the faux piping binding that I found on 52 Quilts blog called Susie's Magic Binding. Wow! What a fun technique that is to use. I'll definitely be adding this to my bag of tricks. It's perfect for baby quilts but I think that in the future I'll keep with the traditional hand-sewn binding for wall-hangings.
It's a fun way to add more contrast to your binding. I may experiment with different widths the next time I try this technique. Now I keep showing you the quilt horizontally (and that is how I want to hang it up at home) but for the show I'm sewing on a hanging sleeve so that it goes vertically. If you're in the south bay area of northern California on the weekend of March 14 and 15, then swing on by the Santa Clara Convention Center and see the show. Tickets are $12 at the door.
