Vintage Reproduction is in the Home Stretch Now!

I can't believe how fast the hand quilting has went on the last border of the Vintage Reproduction quilt! Yesterday I finished up and wallah! There I was ironing off the quilt marking. I had to be careful because I used a blue wash-out marking pen on the corner bird blocks and those particular markings cannot handle excess heat.

Ironing marks off the last border of Vintage Reproduction.

I ended up using 'Miracle Marker' on the last border because I needed a light colored quilting line and I thought it would be quicker than trying to use one of my white pencils.  The marking lines are a little rougher than a pencil, but that sort of thing doesn't bother me much.  Nothing about my quilts are ever going to be perfect! In fact, *groan, I ended up noticing two spots (see where I put the safety pins?) that needed a quick fix.  I was doing so much of the hand quilting in the evening with less than wonderful lighting, working with black thread on a dark purple border and the rest of the story pretty much writes itself. Yep, it was impossible to leave 'as is' and hope nobody would ever notice....

Uh oh, problems with the quilting...

This quilt needs to be done by Friday, July 19th in order to be entered into our local quilt show and I'm feeling good about making that deadline now. I checked out several different colors for possible binding use.  This is a tough one.  I kind of like the cheddar yellow, but then it almost seems to dull the quilt down in an odd sort of way? Pink is definitely out--too much of that in the quilt.  Blue is bland, green is pathetic, and black disappears. Agghhh!!  I finally decided to try lavender.

Found a binding that might work for the
Vintage Reproduction.

I didn't have any really amazing lavender fabrics, but then I remembered a box of abandoned binding my mom gave to me years and years ago.  It was all wadded up in a ball, strings everywhere from where she tears the fabric, but yes! There was one long piece (over 300 inches) of a lavender binding! I had to spend quite a bit of time cutting threads, smoothing it out, ironing it and then cutting it down to the size of binding I prefer (2 5/8"). All I need now is about 43" more inches of something that will blend in and I'm set! Love these frugal finds! lol

Getting the next quilt in the hoop!

I've already put the next quilt in the hoop. You know me. Always have to have something ready to work on when I'm in the mood! This is the #2 in the 9-patch series that I did the machine quilting on the other day. There are just 12 sampler blocks that I left un-quilted with the idea of coming back and hand quilting them on a later date. Which is now of course, because the hoop is empty and would probably feel lonely and useless without a quilt in it.*wink