#handi quilter

In last week’s blog, I told you about this pretty little PIGS (Projects in Grocery Sacks) quilt. I’m working hard at finishing at least one PIG a month. I had to hurry to get this project finished while it was still April.

When I wrote last week’s blog, I was stitching the straight-line quilting in the yellow border on the Handi Quilter Avante longarm quilting machine that we have in the sewing studio at work. The straight-line quilting went wonderfully well.

April’s PIGS Project

I love the quilting.

In the four corner blocks of the border, I wanted to outline the applique and then do echo quilting similar to what I’d done in the center of the quilt. I just could not get the curved lines to look like I wanted them to. I’ll admit that I am a perfectionist and because I love this quilt and the other quilting on it, I wasn’t willing to settle for second rate quilting in the corners. So I didn’t quilt them on the Avante.

It isn’t a problem with the Avante. It’s a problem with my experience, my level of expertise.

A Quilted Corner Block

I took the quilt back home and unsewed the one corner block I’d tried to quilt on the longarm and then redid it and quilted the other three corner blocks on my Baby Lock Destiny. The Destiny is one of the newer machines with a large throat so free-motion quilting is easy to manage on it.

I went on to bind my quilt. I do all steps of the binding by machine.

Stitched and Pressed

Glued

I stitch the binding to the front of the quilt, press, glue the binding to the back of the quilt with Elmer’s School glue and stitch in place from the front. If you’d like more complete instructions for this method of binding a quilt, there is a Skill Builder in the November/December 2016 issue of McCall’s Quilting which is available at quiltandsewshop.com both in hard copy and digital format.

My quilt needs a name and a label and it will be done.

I’m going to try to complete 2 PIGS in May. Wish me luck!

And until next time, happy quilting.

Save