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Strip It - done at last!

I used Northcott's Morning Blossom fabric for a test quilt, then added on to make it for a summer quilt (no batting) by adding borders. I got it up to the width of the mattress and from the foot of the mattress up to, tucked under and over the pillows. All I had to do was the drop on the sides, foot of the bed and smaller border for the top edge that goes behind the pillows. The warm weather a few weeks ago spurred me to get going on it after letting it "rest" since January.


There was still fabric remaining and I decided to do a sort of piano key border, using strips of varying widths and lengths. There wasn't enough to do a strip the entire size of the drop. I had various widths of pieces left. So I started sewing the same width strips together, then cutting to the 19" length I wanted. Some strips have 2 fabrics, some 3 and some 4. The widths vary from 2" to a bit over 4". I'm close to having enough for the 3 borders, but I'm soooooo sick of those strips!


Then I decided to take a break from that -- it was cold again, so I had some time to procrastinate.


But now finally, after many months, the summer bed quilt is done!


Using the Tin Lizzie I bought over a year ago, I "quilted" it, no batting. There isn't room on my Lizzie to load the entire width of the quilt, so I quilted the center section. I'm very much a beginner when it comes to longarm free motion (that's an understatement!!). It turned out not too bad, I'm satisfied with it and use it.


The Old Creamery Quilt Store had a Moda wide backing that is perfect for the Morning Blossom fabric! I left the entire backing WOF. I had left about 8" of backing at the top also, because I need to add on more to go behind the pillow.


Starting with the bottom of the quilt, I laid the quilt/backing on the table and placed the border right sides together on top, matching the raw edge of the border piece to the raw edge of the top, backing extending beyond (to the right).



Using lots of pins to hold everything together, I took it to the machine and stitched the seam.

Then, pressing the border away from the quilted top onto the extended backing, I trimmed the backing 1.5" beyond the top. (I guess I didn't take a picture of the trimming, this is top border showing how I trimmed.)


After letting it simmer in my mind while piecing and quilting, I decided to simply fold the backing over onto the front, instead of binding it, every other idea seemed to be much too complicated.


The width of the backing fabric wasn't long enough to go from the top edge of the quilt to the bottom edge, piecing was necessary. Since I was going to cut the bottom corners diagonally, that seemed to be the place to do the piecing.

This is the finished corner, but of course, no pictures working on it!

Cutting the corners diagonally is something I learned from my mom, she always did the bottom corners that way to keep the corners from hanging all the way down to the floor.


After all the borders were sewn on, I trimmed again to get the backing even on all four sides, 1.25". I folded the backing raw edge to meet the quilt top raw edge. You can see the crease from pressing.

Then I pressed it again onto the top, just like you would fold over binding.


The corners were bulky, so I trimmed out some of the excess fabric...


...and mitered the corner.

I needed to do it mirror image for the other side.


My sewing machine has so many decorative stitches that go unused. I decided to use one for topstitching this.


At the corners I sewed to the outer edge and then back to the inner folded edge.


Ah! Finally done!! Well, not quite done, but I wanted it on the bed, since it had warmed up. There are a ton of threads that need to be clipped, and hopefully, I get that done one of these days.


I love this quilt! I love the fabric! It's so bright and cheerful and looks so summer-y.


Whew! I didn't keep track of my time on this one, I don't want to know how long it took. I'm just glad it's done!