August Finish

The second Bug Strippy is done and quilted with the same dragonfly pantograph. I have been applying the binding on these strippies all by machine, and I'm really beginning to like that method. I think it was on Millie's Quilting blog that I found one day the method where you apply quarter-inch wide fusible along the edge, iron the binding in place, then topstitch it. I use a small zig zag stitch to do this, and it works so well.

I finished the quilting on Holidays at Home and took that off the frame yesterday and got the binding sewn to one side of the quilt. This morning I sat down and started handstitching it on the back side and hope to have that done before the end of the week.

This afternoon I loaded Christmas Lights, a quilt by Bonnie Hunter that was featured in Quiltmaker a couple years ago. I'll bet some of you made this quilt--I saw quite a few of them around the blogosphere last year or the year before. My top has been in the ready-to-quilt pile for quite a while. I wanted to quilt little light bulbs on it but couldn't find a pantograph that I liked. Then I thought maybe a simple tree with a star on top. My border print is poinsettias though, so I finally settled on a poinsettia pantograph, and I went with a yellow-green-rose variegated thread. I like the effect. The pattern is one of the more difficult ones for me to stitch out, but it's going pretty well. I don't know how well you can see the stitching. It's a busy pattern on a busy quilt.

I'm on track to finish at least three quilts this month, all UFOs; and it's a good feeling to get them off my plate.