Luna-see Quilt

 
Well, I did it!  I managed to finish the luna-see quilt.  It was almost named the bad word quilt but it really is deserving of a better name than that. 

The quilting turned out better than I had hoped.  I did a simple cross hatch across the blocks and a couple of straight lines to frame them.  (The faded spots are actually sunlight that filtered through the trees and was picked up by the camera.)

To fill in the scallops I drew a kind of-sort of lotus pattern that I figured I could repeat with a degree of consistency.  Fortunately, the variations don't really matter. I am almost (but not really) sad that I did black quilting on black fabric because it doesn't really show up all that well.  But then, that is why I did it.  So it wouldn't show up that well. 

 It took me quite a while to get the hang of sewing the scallops on both by machine and then again by hand.  I did quite a bit of quilt wrestling to get it finished.  Actually, I would stitch about two and half scallops and then I had to walk away.  It took me about two days to get it all done. 

To stitch the binding you have to clip the low points almost to the seam allowance, bunch up the quilt and sew straight across.  You do the same thing for the hand sewing and then it all falls neatly into cute little tucks.  No need to miter anything.  Well that is the theory.

By the end of the quilt I was able to stitch across pretty reliably.  The same with the hand sewing.  I kept wanting to pull the binding too tight.  That was a double problem since I refused to make a bias binding which is REQUIRED for scalloped edges.  Phoey.  My curves were gentle enough to make it work out OK but it probably did require a wee bit of extra fussing. 

The details:  This quilt measures 40 x 44 inches.  It is made of 100% cotton quilters fabric with the exception of the binding which is a cotton poly blend.  The batting in cotton.  It will be a lovely baby quilt or table topper.  This one is destined for the shop or the shows I am doing later this Summer and Fall.