Lap Quilting Update

I am making good headway on the lap quilting job. Lots of hand work. I think I have about 40 hours in on it already. 

I am in the process of connecting all the blocks. This is how is begins. The backing pieces and the batting are folded back and the block edges are sewn. The brown checked fabric frays easily, so I'm taking a half inch seam allowance to make sure it doesn't fray apart. Then I lay it flat with the seam open, trim the batting so it butts together, then fold one side of the backing and hand sew it down like a binding. Not hard but very labor intensive.

Here is a group of 6 put together. I'm doing them in sections for better handling, but the last seam is going to be fun, lol.

Because of the mitered corners on the borders, at each intersect there are 8 seam lines meeting. It kind of comes up like a teepee.

So, I am quilting a circle in that area, then quilting a quarter inch from both sides of the connecting seams to maybe give it more stability, and fill in some blank areas.

You can see that after the blocks are connected that the areas near the seams are puffy. We can't have that!! So that's why I'm doing the quilting there.

Oh, and this block was one she sent that is to be made into a pillow cover. I'm saving it til last as I need to layer and quilt it too. It will be a nice ending to this project.

Hopefully next time I post, all of the blocks will be connected. I think I will bind it before I do the remainder of the quilting. That way I won't have to worry about any fraying. I am going to do a 1/2" binding, which I have never done, bit I think it will look nice.

Later,
WilmaNC