Finished!

As you may know, I had been hurriedly trying to get a table runner finished for my son in time for a trip we were making to visit him for his birthday. Well, today I am pleased to say that I can show you the finished quilt.

I am really pleased with how it has turned out and at the weekend we visited my son and his girlfriend and gave it to them.  It was nice to see it in place on their table and they seemed very happy with it! I hadn't been sure how to quilt it and, as I had pressed all the seams open as I was piecing it, stitching in the ditch around the blocks was not really an option.

In the end I decided to use a zig-zag stitch and sew over all the seams.  I liked the effect this gave and it looked nice from the back too.

To speed up the binding process, I added and finished the binding by machine rather than finishing it by hand as I would normally.  It was very quick to do and saved a lot of hand sewing!!

I have tried machine stitching binding on before and never been very happy with the results. The method I used previously was to sew the binding strip to the back of the quilt and turn it to the front then, machine stitch the binding down from the front.  Because my binding never seems to be exactly the same width all the way round, this always meant the line of stitching you could see on the back of the quilt was a bit wobbly and I didn't like it.

This time I sewed my binding to the front, turned it to the back (like I do if I was going to hand stitch it in place) pinned it down and then sewed through from the front, catching the binding at the back.  It is still a bit wobbly in places but, somehow I preferred the look it gives.  (I hope some of this makes sense to someone!)

Anyway, it was finished on time and I am happy with the end result!!