This is the second binding I made for this quilt. With the first one I really messed up the mitered corners, I thought I could 'save' the whole thing by cutting into the binding that was already on the quilt (instead of just unpicking and starting over) and replacing the terrible corners with new nicely mitered ones. That was not a good idea and the thought of unpicking the old binding and making a whole new one wasn't very appealing. So I left the unfinished quilt in my WIP basket for a month until this weekend. I made a nice new green binding and sewed it on the front of the quilt by machine. Then I thought I might try sewing it on the back by machine as well. I had read about it
here and thought I should be able to do it too. Wrong! There were gaps, there was wobbly stitching, it looked horrendous. So I unpicked that too and went back to sewing the binding to the back of the quilt by hand while (half) watching Back to the Future and then the X factor and I'm still not done with the sewing. Hopefully I will be able to show you the finished quilt later this week!
Luckily my embroidery 'experiment' was more successful. I tried my hand at the
Feathered chain stitch and enjoyed it very much. I used Carina's left handed version of her book
Borders and Beyond (which I gave away to a lucky winner yesterday!) and basically it's a nicely arranged combination of
Lazy Daisy Stitches. I tried to make the ones below a bit broader so it would look more like fern or something.
Ooh and I almost forgot to share a rather gross fabric stash experience! I have a
very nice cupboard in which I keep my fabric stash. Some of the smaller cuts are in plastic baskets. It's all reasonably well organised. I was rummaging through one of those baskets to find fabric for the quilt binding when I felt something odd. It was a dead fly. A dead fly! Not a tiny one either. In my fabric stash. Not on top but somewhere in between the fabrics. Eeeew! If you have any scary fabric tales to tell do share them in the comments. ;)
