After nineteen years in the making, the flying geese are flown! I used a high loft poly batting and the backing is the
108" fabric from Joann's in blue paisley. The border on the two long sides is a white with navy tiny print and the binding is the reverse - a tiny white on dark navy. Those two fabrics were in my mother's fabric piles after she passed away, and I have had them as well as a few of her quilting cottons that were in smaller pieces. Some are in this quilt. So this is a work of tribute to my mother, who was a better quilter than I will ever be, but who didn't like the quilting part of it, whereas I love the free motion quilting. I have to say I liked
applying the binding as well. It took many viewings of several
videos on
binding to get the full picture of appying the machine binding. I wanted to have it all by machine - no hand quilting here. One place I have found great videos is
The Missouri Quilt Company website. Great stuff, and great gals there. There is a tutorial on the
Flying Geese that is terrific. I didn't use it though because I had finished the top a long time ago - about five years or so ago. Watch the several links I am including on binding, and you can see the two ways of doing it - machine and hand, and then all machine. I love it all by machine. Wendy Butler Berns on Craftsy does it all by machine, and I love her classes. Her
Machine Quilting class is terrific.
Next project up is a couple of warm jammie fabric quilts made from scraps and length of fabric left over from the several pair of knit and flannel jammies I have made my grandsons over the last 9 years or so. I have a lot left over, so this should be a design challenge as well as a major winter project for me. I start the cutting this week. It will be some sort of wide strip or wonky block quilt - I haven't decided on the design, but I can't follow patterns as I want to do it all myself from start to finish, and I am not good at measuring or at calculating and the thought of following a pattern meticulously makes my head throb, so I will be jotting up a few designs and getting on with it later in the week. So many people on the
PatternReview site have been more than helpful to me in the quilting endeavor, and I have made some good friends in the quilting world.
So this first picture isn't the quilt, but the cutest picture of a cat helping me sew. Pearl loves to help. Helps all she can. Here she is keeping the fabric nice and warm for me before I made the Ukulele Case. I count on all that help. I wanted to write a post about checking the links on my blog because today I checked them and had to take about 6 links down due to either missing blogs or blogs so out of date (over a year) as to be no longer active at all. Sorry to see these blogs go, and perhaps I may decide to do the same myself one of these months, you never know. So if you see that your blog is gone, and you didn't realize that there was problem in the linkage, let me know! So O.K., here is another photo of the quilt. 
THE QUILT, as in the first whole huge large quilt I ever made. As I have said in the past, it only took my about 19+ years to finish all the way. I am still amazed that a person can learn to free motion quilt and assemble a quilt all themselves and do it on a home sewing machine. And of course, once you do you are hooked. Absolutely hooked. So I am now cutting strips to make two slightly-larger-than-lap quilts out of all the flannel I have left from several years of jammie making. We'll see how these fabrics can work up into some sort of design overall. Keep your radios tuned to this station.
