Christmas Quilt

The quilt!  (Okay, wall hanging), edges cut and ready to close.

Several years ago, I bought a lovely Christmas Quilt panel that was designed by one of my favorite artists- Laurel Burch.  I bought a pair of cat earrings that she had made about 25 years ago, and I've been an avid fan of her work since then.  

I found the material at a great little quilt shop, Patches Quilting, a locally owned and operated business.  You know, I'm all about supporting local businesses whenever and wherever I can.  

Anyway, I bought the fabric panel, but neglected to buy anything to back it with at the time.  

This past November, I ventured back to Patches and found a fabulous fabric- solid black with small gold dots that would pair well with the fabric.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I laid pinned the fabrics and batting together, and began quilting.

I know that there are sewing machines out there that quilt, but for right now, I wanted to hand quilt this piece.  I hand quilted the baby blankets for all of the children, and I plan to hand quilt the blankets that I am giving them for graduation.

I finished the quilting earlier this week.  Today, I cut the edges down so that I can sew the edges closed.  I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to close the edges with quilt binding, or if I'm going to turn the edges in and sew them together.  I'm still not certain which one I'll do, but I do have a month or so to decide.

In order to cut the edges, I used a straight edge metal ruler and my fabric scissors.  The ruler itself is the width that I want for the border, so it was a perfect match.  I lined up one edge of the ruler against the bottom edge of the red band that surrounds the quilt pattern and cut evenly.

Edge of quilt, straight edge, and scissors.

One note about fabric scissors - dedicate one pair to fabric, and only to fabric.  The scissors need to be sharp and cutting anything else with your scissors - paper, cardboard, tape, will dull the scissors and they will pull the threads at the edge of the fabric and cause some serious fraying of your very expensive fabric, and even more lovingly quilted materials! I've had my scissors for longer than I've been married.  When the kids were born and I quit doing small crafty work, quilting, etc, I locked my sewing scissors up (along with my straight edge ruler, rotary cutter, and needles) into a box with a lock and several packets of silica gel to prevent rusting.  Everything went up on a top shelf.  When I broke into the sewing stuff again 5 years ago, everything was in perfect condition and I didn't have to purchase new supplies.

The very nice thing about this fabric is that the design is already woven into the fabric.  There was no piecing or sewing of small parts.  The only thing I did was to hand quilt it- I traced around the outlines of each of the designs, as well as outlined the borders on the quilt.

Now that I'm looking a little bit more at this quilt, I'm leaning towards closing the edges with quilt binding.

A close up of the bird tree- center panel.

The bird ornament.