Críochnaithe

The Irish Chain flimsy made back in 2019 is finally finished (the Irish word in this post's title). Another finish in the space of 8 days? Inconceivable!

"I do not think it means what you think it means."

The actual back, followed by the computer-generated plan for piecing the back.

You can see how the print scale is WAY off in these!

I simply eyeballed straight-intended lines through the dark squares of the chains, using a variegated King Tut on the top and a blue variegated AURifil in the bobbin.

I found several bobbins in this cone . . .

. . .and since I was rapidly running out of empty bobbins to fill in preparation for each quilting project, I chose to use them as spools as I quilted through all the Irish Chains.

While using "Google Lens" to try to find the source of the pattern I thought I was going to use in each light area . . .

. . . I was instead shown a pattern that worked much better for the shape I was filling:

I got confused only once in the 84 times I did this, requiring some un- and re-stitching. I used AURifil off-white in the top and bottom so no pesky dark bobbin threads would peek through. I wasn't sure how well I'd be able to pull this off, and didn't want to showcase my efforts.

I very uncharacteristically left the pieced outer borders alone, aside from running an olive green line along both sides of the sashes, and a navy line along the last border.

Not quilted in this picture--I grabbed it from the original 7/2019 post 'cause it's a good close-up.

It feels weird to have such "large" areas unquilted, but modern-day batts allow us to do that now, don't they?

All the threads:

bobbin           bobbin/top          sashes          outer border        top

I applied the binding to the untrimmed quilt, using the edge of the top to eyeball the 1/4" seam. Normally I apply the binding to the bottom, fold it around to the top and stitch it down, using the same bobbin thread I'd been using throughout. This time I figured I could stitch down the binding without trimming anything first, giving me a little more purchase as I pulled the backing homespuns taut and smoothed the top border over that before stitching down the next portion of binding. I'd made the binding 5 years ago when I finished the flimsy, and had this much left:

All went swimmingly until I started the final trimming. I wasn't paying close enough attention at the corners, and managed an oopsie:

There's supposed to be a fold there.

I had carelessly cut most of the fold away from the mitered corner. Here's the result . . .

. . . and here's what it should look like:

That 4" scrap--could I replace this corner with that left-over piece? Well, clever girl that I am, I had already cut it into two 2" squares and a triangle, all sorted into their respective bins. With hope and dread, and having already decided I'd use black fabric in this corner if I had to, I looked in my shoebox of blues and found a FQ-ish piece of this fabric still lurking about. Whew! Yes, it was tedious unstitching 8 or more inches away from the corner on both sides, but a good lesson about keeping one's wits about oneself when doing things slightly differently from what one is used to!

I'm also keeping the goal of "Never make the same mistake twice" alive by finding whole new ones to make.