Thursday, May 17, 2018

Leah Day's Explore Walking Foot Quilting: My "Rainbow Log Cabin" Part 19

Final corner done!

This time I took a chance and started on the right side.  I still did the right half (marked below) and then the left half.  I don't think it makes a difference if I do it this way or in the order way Leah taught.  It took a little less than two hours - including the marking and hiding of the threads.

So I started putting the tape down from the center and went to the edge, then started sewing on the edge, removed the tape and quilted the next tape, etc.



Here is the last corner:



When I flipped it over I was disappointed to see the tiny folds.  Some of the other corners have little folds too, but this one had more...  Hopefully once it's washed these folds won't stand out.



So here is the quilt now:




I mentioned at the beginning that I had pieced this way back - like 25+ years ago.  I looked at different Irish chain designs and decided I wanted more colors so I made it so there were five colors. I was surprised at how it looked once I started sewing things together.

I knew I was supposed to have more backing fabric, but it seemed I would be wasting fabric to do that.  Now I know I should have had the backing at least four inches all around (and I can use the pieces in some other project so it's not wasted anyway) one inch is not enough.  You can see how tight everything is for me now.

I had a friend help me with the basting, but I cut it too tight and it wasn't centered properly so the batting is shorter than it should be too. The batting is Quilters Dream Cotton, natural. (Won April 2016 as part of Quilt Qwazy Queens Blog Hop.)

Anyway, now I have another quilted top, ready for binding. The quilting is following the directions by Leah for the Rainbow Log Cabin from her Explore Walking Foot Quilting book, and I am really pleased with the detail.  I used Leah's 40 wt. Isacord Polyester Embroidery Thread Silver.  

I have 25+ year old fabric to make bias strips for rust binding.  I remember when I finished it I was thinking a different color would have been better, but oh well.  I know I'm going to be cutting off the nice points at the center of each side as I didn't make this all correctly.

In addition to the backing and batting issue, I should have been more consistent on where the corner stitching ended.  I'm just writing this here to hopefully remind myself for the next project I work on!

2 comments:

  1. It looks so great all finished! I think the tiny pleats will completely disappear with washing and drying, that's been my experience. I've also ended up with the batting and backing really close like that and crossed my fingers that the binding would cover it. Looks to me like you have plenty for that :) Congrats on getting the quilting all finished, woo hoo!!

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