Time for some binding!

I reached a big goal post this weekend but there is not much to show yet.  I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED HAND-QUILTING THE PINE BURR QUILT!  And how long have I been quilting it?

I checked back through old posts (that's why it is nice to have a quilt record blog) and find that TODAY is the anniversary of getting the quilt basted and ready for quilting.  That means that it has taken me practically one year to hand quilt this thing.  I now have the binding on and will have quite a few evenings ahead of me for sewing it down.  Then it will need to be washed before I show it..so much cat hair on it.  The end is near!

In the meantime, I have been doing a bit of machine quilting for Mrs. Furui.  A couple of weeks ago when I asked her how many UFOs she had she practically shut the door in my face.  But I am nosy and I pointed to a pile of quilts she had on her piano bench.

"And what are those?"

She had three or four quilts ready to go to different places (Mrs. Furui rarely makes quilts for herself) all in different stages of quilting."

"You'll never be able to start anything new and it will take you forever to get those all HAND quilted.  What's something you haven't started yet and I will take it home to machine quilt."

Mrs. Furui pulled out a basted quilt (we'd basted it long enough ago that I'd forgotten about this quilt) and explained that she was just planning to quilt in straight lines and send the quilt off to the Ronald McDonald House.  Well, straight lines I can do!

On my machine the lines went quickly.  A day later I called Mrs. Furui back.

"Mrs. Furui, the lines are finished.  Do you want me to do something about the border?"

"No, no.  It is too much work for you.  It is fine as is."

Sometimes I find it difficult to tell when my friends are refusing an offer just because they don't want to impose on me or because they really don't need my help.  With Mrs. Furui I've come to learn that she will forgive me if I step on her toes.

"Well, I'm going to go ahead and quilt the border and if you don't have any 'druthers then I guess you'll just have to settle for what I do."

I got out one of our miso-soup bowls and marked scallops all around the lace.  And then I marked lines between the scallops and in the scallop centers.

I went around the quilt free-motion quilting the scallops.

...and then decided that there wasn't enough depth so I went around again adding a second line of quilting.

Finally I quilted the straight lines from the border into the scallops and then back out to the border again. 

I love quilting borders!  There is so little fabric to move through that sewing machine throat!

Sorry, I don't have a photo of the completed quilt...  I took it back to Mrs. Furui for her to do her own binding and she may have already taken it to the Ronald McDonald house.  And now to get back to my own binding.