Dresden Plate Table Runner Finished!

It is quiet in my corner of the world. I have been working away on the DP table runner. The quilting was somewhat frustrating. I really do not enjoy quilting with the walking foot. While it works well, I do not like the constant turning and wrangling with the project at hand. That is where FMQ is so handy as you can go any direction you want. With the walking foot and the turning I had some extra puff in the middle block where I must have pulled too hard towards the seam of the block. Not a big issue though, as it is hardly visible. Nevertheless, for this one I thought it was safer to use the walking foot when outlining the shapes for consistency sake (except for those circles in the middle and ditch quilting around the Dresden). This turned out really nice, I think.

The detail of the outline quilting

 

I stitched some lines in the border which proved a bit difficult...again had some pulling of the fabric. Then I decided to try out Susie's Magic Binding tutorial demonstrated on 52 Quilts in 52 Weeks: All About Aunt Marti. As you can see, not a lot of forward planning on this piece. This binding was sewn on from the back and then machine stitched to the front (in-the-ditch of that little flange). This was very interesting to do...I was not confident at all that I would be able to machine stitch the binding on straight. To my surprise, this worked really well...all I needed was lots and lots of pins to hold it all in place. Given that this was my first time of doing this method, the stitching in the ditch was a bit challenging, however I soon got the hang of this with using one of the pins to gently hold the binding straight. Overall, I was impressed.

What I was not impressed with was my lack of forward planning. Given that I had quilted straight lines around the border, the flange then highlighted that they were not straight (compared to the line of the flange), especially around the corners...this is very noticeable but nothing much I can do about this now. I reckon if I was to do this binding again, I definitely would not be quilting lines in the border...just in case. Can't trust myself to get things straight lately.

Anyway...this binding looks nice on the runner...it is fairly big and chunky though...I like this for a runner, but I am not sure I like this for a quilt.  Might try a different method that I have seen where the little flange is sewn on first and the binding is attached as per normal. This would give you the flange without the bulk.  Well, all good learning though.

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Karin