Tied and True

This poor quilt -- it's been languishing (unfinished) in a bin in the attic for too long! I pieced the top well over a year ago, not long before we moved into this house. Which may have had something to do with my not finishing it at the time... I even had it layered and pinned with batting and backing. At the time, I think I was planning to hand-quilt it, which was quite possibly another deterrent to it actually being completed! Then I lost track of it in the move, wondering every few months where it had gotten to. 

Then I realized that the folded bundle of brown linen in one of my fabric bins was, in fact, my neglected quilt. I pulled it out and decided that it must be finished now -- which seems to be the "theme" of this this pregnancy's nesting so far. And the fastest way to accomplish that would be to tie it! 

Oddly, the only matching embroidery floss I had on hand was the rather unusual blue-green; I had to wait for my next trip to Michael's to pick up the far more common dark brown and tan colors. Though I'm just that lazy that I probably would have used only the green thread if I'd had enough of it... After a bit of a kerfuffle in which I managed to put all of my dark brown ties in the right "row" but the wrong corners (which I didn't even realize was possible!), the rest of the process was relatively smooth sailing.

All of the quilt top fabrics are linen and linen-cotton blends salvaged from garments (you know I love linen and salvaged garments!). It was a bit of an adventure figuring out a design that would make the most of the scraps that I had. The green was actually a Laura Ashley dress that I wore as a teen! The batting is cotton, and the backing is brown linen (leftover from making linen bed sheets several years ago). To bind the edges, I trimmed the batting down to one inch larger than the quilt top. I then trimmed the linen backing so that it would fold over the edge of the batting and onto the quilt top, with enough left to turn under. I hand stitched it to the quilt top/batting, but not all the way through to the underside of the quilt. The result is lovely, but I wonder if I ought to go back and carefully machine stitch the "binding" down to help the quilt keep its shape.

In any case, I am feeling quilt relieved that this project is complete (at long last!), and I think it will be perfect for when the new baby comes -- it's 40" by 48",  just right for outings when our little one  needs a cozy place to rest (and mama, too!).