Almost Finished

I have been steadily working away on my practice wholecloth. Started a rather crazy background filler

...and once started had to continue with it. Was a bit unsure of it as it is a rather playful background in a very traditional design. Grid probably would have been better but I did not feel like it. The texture this produced is really amazing and it does look interesting.

Today I finished the whole piece. Spend half of the day putting in a piano key border. This was not part of the original plan but I had so much fabric left over on the sides that I thought it was a pity to waste all of that.

I used my favourite ruler from the Handiquilter Ruler of the month program - the Line Grid ruler

This ruler is very easy to hold and produces very straight lines. Worked well and went along rather quickly. The only thing that drove me crazy was the Handigrip tape on the back. As I was stitching close to the batting, the end of the ruler really gripped hold of the batting all the time. In the end I took the Handigrip strip off on one end to be able to move the ruler more easily. That worked fine as I still had all my other Handigrips strips on the top. I am actually quite amazed on how evenly and straight this turned out. The only marking that I had  to go by were the center lines on all four sides.

End result before I gave it a bit of a spray with water to get rid of some of the blue marker pen that was still hanging around in some places.

Next comes the binding, then a proper wash and I will need to block this one properly as the tight background is trying to pull the whole thing in a bit. So, a little bit of work ahead still.
This was good fun and a really useless exercise in terms of just focusing in on some ruler practice, while at the same time just going for it and seeing how this would turn out. Love those types of projects.

Karin