Sew Powerful

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Today was the day I set aside to quilt and bind the "Never Underestimate" stitchery, and it is now completed. There is enough stitching on this piece that it really didn't warrant a lot of quilting. With so much color in the embroidery and movement in the binding, a lot of fancy quilting seemed like gilding the lily to me. When the quilting was finished, it looked like this:

I used a smoky monofilament thread in the bobbin and a white thread in the area that was embroidered. Then I switched to black in the border. I've struggled to get my tension right with the pieces I've quilted on Eliza, but this one was the best I've achieved. There are a few little white specks on the back where the white thread pulled through, but I'd let you look at the back without smacking your hands. It's intended to be a wall-hanging, and it's going to hang in my quilting room once I get the hand-sewing on the binding complete.

I stitched right next to the embroidery on the larger elements of the stitchery.

And I quilted some ripples into the fabric on the sewing machine.

Then I stippled in the background. I considered stitching next to the letters, but it would have meant cutting thread at the end of each letter, which seemed like a pain. Also, the words would have been written backwards on the reverse, and so I decided not to.

I did some wavy loopy lines in the border. The fabric there is so busy that nothing much was going to show up.

Then I added a flange and a colorful striped binding.

And there it is...ready for hand-sewing now.

A couple of weeks ago while I was procrastinating about something...housework, no doubt...I made labels for all the quilts that were ready for quilting. I had forgotten about it, but apparently I decided to call this piece "Sew Powerful" when I did that. Finding the sewing machine image with the brand name "Friend" was just a happy accident.

I'll need to print the label onto fabric and then and sew that on. After that, this one will be ready to hang. It's going to be a nice little addition to my upstairs quilting room where Eliza resides.

And with that, I'm finished with a weekend of sewing. Time to make dinner and get on with the evening. Mike has been off work for the past ten days, and he'll be going back tomorrow. Erik and I are having breakfast in the morning. I'm looking forward to that. As for me, time to get going with my annual goal to get more exercise this week. I'll say more about that later.

How did you spend this first weekend of the new year?