Working on this Wednesday 4/4/12

Have you seen Esther Aliu's quilts?  They're fabulous and I've signed up to do her latest mystery. And I have to get the first block done by the 15th, so I'd better hurry along.  Here's how far I've gotten:

I'm linking up with WIP Wednesday. Go to the sidebar to go there and see what others are working on or go to Esther's Forget Me Not mystery page to check it out.

Fabric Tuesday 4/3/12 or Adding a border at the last minute.

UFO #2 for the year is done!  Having tested the quilting motif when I made my last mug rug, I decided to quilt the centers of my blocks with it.  I got ready to bring the back forward to bind my new wall hanging and realized I would like it better if it had a border, but what to do about it now at this stage?  I could have cut off the extra backing and added borders as a QAYG.  Nope, too much work for this one.  I then decided to make the binding wider than normal as I had enough batting and backing to do that.  So that's what I did. 

I turned down the backing to keep it out of cutter's way and cut the batting 1/2" out from the top's edge all the way around.  Then I brought the backing out and trimmed it to 1 3/4" all around the top.

 I then pressed the back by folding the backing to touch the edge of the batting.  This gave me a double edge when I brought it over the batting to form the binding.  But how was I going to align the edge to sew down accurately and evenly as I had forgotten to trim my edges.  Oops.

 After much thought, I decided to draw a 1/4" pencil line along the edges to mark where I would bring the folded backing forward to and sew it down.

 Here's what it looked like as I sewed it.

 The binding did seem much more substantial and wider.  It looked like wide binding so giving me the illusion of a border.

 And here is posey garden ready for hanging over my fireplace once I've added a sleeve and buried threads.  Made all with scraps, blocks from old swaps, and fabric from my stash.  You can find the pattern for this simplified block under my tab:  free patterns.

I'm linking to Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story, Linky Party Tuesday and Judy's 2012 UFO Challenge.  Go on over to my sidebar and see what other's have posted at those buttons.

Design Wall Monday 4/2/12

Nothing on my design wall this monday. I'm working on binding the charity quilt that was on it though. For these I do the binding by machine. Goes much faster. I first sew the binding to the back of the quilt. Then I bring it to the front and sew it down. The seam then is usually right along the binding and hardly shows.

Had a strange thing happen. Bought a package of Mountain Mist polyester batting - a nice thin batting. Unfolded it and stuck it in the dryer on warm to take out the wrinkles. When I took it out of the dryer, not only was it smaller, but also twice as thick as before. ???? You can see the poofiness in the photo. Has this ever happened to you? Guess I'll save the other 4 rectangles of batting for quilts we tie.

What's on your design wall? Go on over to Judy's Patchwork Times on my sidebar and see what others have on their's.