Double the Pleasure

These were made (made), sandwiched (sandwiched), and quilted back-to-back (time-wise, not fabric-wise), then finished (= washed, dried, photographed) yesterday:

Again I quilted with a free-motion serpentine stitch along all the seam allowances, but first I ran a straight line through the diagonals I wanted to showcase. In the left quilt, I used a dark red and black thread through all the maroon squares.

In the right quilt, I ran a line of the YLI Harvest thread through the dusty rose diagonals, as those were the only ones I had intentionally positioned in that top. For the serpentine stitches I used up the last of the King Tut "Freedom", then moved on to the next multicolored cone that was lowest in thread. For the bobbin I pulled out a multicolored cone that matched most of the colors of the backing fabric. (Girl Cat in lap. Can't get up and check on names/makers.)

The black borders were FMQed using a variation of a Feather Chain pattern, which is very forgiving and great for taking up excess fabric in, shall we say, zaftig borders.

This used to be sold by Golden Threads, but they've been taken over by HandiQuilter and this pattern isn't on that site. A pity, but it's easy enough to eyeball for FMQing.

 

I love using stripes as binding, especially as bias binding (because you don't have to worry about getting them exactly lined up that way). I went to my Marden's stripes stash . . .

. . . and selected these two 1/2-yard pieces (the remains of which are shown).

After the 2" strips are folded in half and half again, then sewn down (by machine this time), there isn't much left to be seen of any pattern, but it's enough to complement the variety of colors in the quilt.

These are the last of The Great N1C Purge and will be given to the head of the Community First! Quilters this weekend. Roughly 700 2.5" strips and 2.5 years of sewing, and that project has been (literally?) put to bed!