A Gift For Loretta

While in Auburn at their guild last month, my lodging hostess Millie Ruffalo took me to the local quilt shop "The Whistle Stop." This is a top-notch shop by the way and there I found this last of the bunch  ice skaters fused appliqué kit. It had friend Loretta 's ( lifelong ice skater enthusiast and quilter) name all over it.  I bought it in an instant so wanted to get it  bordered and quilted and of course to her before the holidays....   TODAY is delivery day.   Hubby is home but I am away curled up  recuperating from injury and illness so thanks to my friends Prudy Carter and Janmarie Halliday, it  gets delivered. 
Loretta has had a tough physical year and awaits major  heart surgery ( on the wait list)... thus we are looking forward to her  future skating and quilt retreat outings.   ;-)  Merry Christmas Loretta!

Click on photo for enlarged view

I inset a quarter inch fillet of cranberry dupioni silk  before bordering with a metallic gold and white dressmaker fabric. The fabric was exquisite all on its own so I essentially used gold thread for quilting and used the fabric as my guide  as to how to quilt  in order to play up the beauty of it's elegant design.

Key Learning... cotton is much easier  to use as binding... (Cotton holds the ironed fold over crease where softer/slippery synthetics don't)

 If using something soft for binding, I suggest 2 things...
1) Before adding binding strips to your quilt, sew ( and perhaps overlock) the 2 raw edges of your binding. WHY?  I found that when straight stitch sewing  binding to the quilt,  slippery raw edges of binding ( particularly the out of view edge)  easily slides out of place and fails to be caught in the straight stitch.  ARGH!
2) Once binding is on and turned to the back side of the quilt, consider adding a straight stitch 1/16th inch off the 'ditch' seam and on the binding itself.  WHY??  I  found slippery soft fabric used in a binding... somehow looks a bit lumpy even if the binding is on perfectly. The stitch off the ditch forces the  filled binding to lie down a good bit better.