Wine Gums

The Values quilt is finished, and I love it!  Can words express how in love with this quilt I am?  The name of this quilt is Wine Gums, since that's what those darker diamonds remind me of.  Let me just show you some photos.


The Amy Butler flannel (Paradise Garden in wine, from the Love line) was glorious to work with.  Contrary to my expectations, it didn't fuzz up too much or fray or cause any quilting problems.  I sprayed it with Mary Ellen sizing before assembling, but I don't really think that made too much difference.  I had planned to use spray starch, but forgot to buy any.  The flannel does add to the weight of the quilt, in a delicious way once it's finished, but it did make the quilting process a bit more challenging on my domestic machine.

I quilted it with two colours of King Tut red cotton, in a kind of spiral pattern over each diamond and a weird kind of poorly thought out swaggy thing on the edges.  It quilted up fast that way.

For the first time ever, I sewed the binding on by machine.  It's not perfect, but it's not bad, either.  I had a look at Rita's tutorial, and did it more or less like she suggests, but with basting instead of pinning and without all the zigzagging.  I find the zigzagging to stabilize the edge isn't necessary if you sew the binding to the raw edge of the quilt before you trim the excess batting and backing.  I saw this technique in a Fons and Porter show on PBS, and have done it this way ever since.  I find I get a fatter bound edge, which has a satisfying feel to me.  Anyway, I think the ditch-stitching on the front is about 90% hidden and I caught the back edge properly about 85% of the time (had to finish up those holes by hand).  But I'm pleased with it.  AND (drumroll, please) all four of the mitred corners are perfect!  That is a definite first for me!

Many thanks to Katie, who as the leader of this quiltalong, is the godmother of the Wine Gums quilt. And, as I said in a previous post, this quilt is for my daughter, who is usually too blase to be interested in my quilting, but was uncharacteristically enthusiastic about this one.  She likes it, and I do, too.  Now, over to Amy's to see the other Sew-n-Tell goodness!

Edited to add info about wine gums: I had forgotten that I didn't know what they were before I moved to Canada and perhaps other Americans are also unfamiliar with them. They are like much more resistant jelly beans, without the sugar coating, and a bit less sweet. They contain no wine or other alcohol, despite their name. They look like this:

And Maynard's is the archetypal brand, at least in Canada.