Annie's Quilt

It's finally finished, and just in time -- I headed this weekend to visit my friend Annie and deliver her Christmas/Valentine/Easter quilt.  This is basically a miniature quilt -- 25" square(ish).  There's a 1/2" white inner border and a 1-1/2" outer border in a red that is a different print than any of the reds in the quilt.  Annie loves red!

 As I mentioned in a previous post, the white areas of the quilt are densely quilted in a cross-hatch pattern.  Taking the time and effort to knot and bury the ends of each stitching line definitely eliminated the problem of the big white knots that formed on the back of the quilt when I back-stitched.  And the ladies on The Quilting Board were right -- washing did hide some of the problems as well.  I free-motion quilted hearts in the six red blocks.  They show up better on the back than on the front, so I'm happy that they aren't dotted with those horrible knots!

I wanted a template to follow when I did the hearts.  You know how we quilters love our tools!  Here's my Valentine template.  First, sketch out the shape to fit the block.  These blocks are all 3-1/2" squares.    When I was happy with the sketch, I cut it out.

But it was too floppy to draw around on the fabric.  So I taped it to some thin but sturdy cardboard.  I do have template plastic at home, but I'm "roughing it" here in Ft. Myers (not!).  Voila!  Do you think that Nabisco will give me some $$ for product placement?

 

Here's the heart shape quilted onto one of the blocks.

   

Here it is from the back.  I'm pretty happy with the FMQ stitching.   I picked a gold backing fabric because Annie wears mostly gold jewelry, and I picked a swirly pattern to contrast with the strict geometric design of the front and the quilting.

 

 Here's the complete back of the quilt.  I like how the quilting made the heart shape came through, even without the color to guide the eye.

The binding is also a intentional contrast to the quilt top.  I was gifted some wonderful gold-on-black fabrics by a friend (thank you, Charlotte!) when we first arrived in Florida.  I decided that one, already cut into 2" strips, would be perfect for the binding -- a very traditional pieced top with an Asian-influenced binding.

I had a tiny piece of a log cabin block that I didn't finish because it was an "extra."  So I sewed a strip of the border fabric around it and made it into the label.  It's so tiny -- 2" across!  It was hard to write on it, what with all those seams. 

Now I'm looking forward to catching up with some of my UFO projects and starting a quilt for my son and his fiancee!