Today I want to share the quilting I did on the Lotus Quilt and the scrappy binding I made.
For the quilting, I started with my walking foot. I didn’t bother to trace lines – I just followed the lines of the striped squares. I used white thread. They didn’t come out perfectly straight, but when does my quilting ever come out perfectly straight? It looks good from far away and I think most non-quilters wouldn’t notice or care if it’s not straight, anyway.
Here’s a close up from the back:
The diagonal quilting sometimes ended with a blank square, and I didn’t feel like my skills would allow me to continue the diagonal lines straight without guidance, so I turned off and followed the edge of the square like in the top photo along the left side. It might show up better in the one below.
It made for a cool geometric addition to the quilting, which I like.
Then I quilted in the border with straight line quilting, a little more than a quarter inch apart. I did three lines around. On two of the corners I cut across, but on the other two corners I didn’t – because I was saving those two blocks for hand quilting. The white on white quilting didn’t show up well in my picture of that, but I hope you can discern it.
I wanted to hand quilt C & G’s initials in the one block, and the wedding date in the other. I debated thread colors: should I use black thread on the white block, and white thread on the black block? Or should I use a bright color to add a pop? I have a variegated blue thread that I really like, and when I asked my roommate’s opinion she agreed that I should use that on the white block, and to use white thread on the black block.
In the end, I ran out of time and I quilted a heart in white on the black block, rather than the wedding date.
The binding is made from more of the Alexander Henry print I used on the back, along with a black and white floral and a grey print of fans that I’ve had for a long, long time – that is some of my oldest fabric, I think. I really like scrappy bindings and pieced backs – which is convenient for me, given that I almost never have enough yardage for a full back.
Here’s the full quilt from the front:
And the back: