Memory Quilts - Busy Bee

I've had my head down so well focussing on the Memory Quilts that I forgot to come and share my progress with you.  I think I just found a "zone" and stayed in it for a week and a bit!

I finished piecing the top for our nephew's quilt.  I love how those bright pops of wonky starriness and the little pixels of stardust contrast with the more subdued shades of the shirt fabrics.

Then I set to scouring my stash for suitable backing fabrics.  Although I was tempted to forego the option of piecing backings, I did actually find enough suitable fabrics for all three quilts and made the effort to stitch them up.

In the process of working on these three backings (forgot to take a pic of the red one) I learned that my aversion to pieced backing is not to do with the actual piecing itself - that's not difficult at all.  Rather my reluctance comes from the lining up of the backing at the basting stage to make sure the fabric seams aren't all running at horrible angles.  Think I managed it better than usual this time, but you can be the judge when I post finished pics.

Following that I got my wiggle on and settled down to quilt all three quilts - not in one go, but when there was a spare minute I was there weaving my basted sandwiches through the walking foot.  Top tip - try not to sneeze when you are in the groove of quilting wavy lines.  The sneezes took me unawares and my nice smooth waves are interrupted here and there by weeny little jumps as I achoo-ed - oops!!

The pile of shirts came out again after all that quilting and I cut what felt like acres of 2.5" strips to make up the required inches of binding for the boy quilt.  It wasn't really acres, of course, as it's not a huge quilt, but when you are not cutting from nice full width of fabric pieces it can seem like you are cutting forever.  Red and aqua strips were also sliced and pieced to make scrappy bindings for the girl quilts.  I was definitely on a roll!

And then, I did this!  Yes, I started to stitch my binding on before I had folded and pressed it in half  doh!  Spent a little time in the pleasure of Mr Ripper's company before re-doing it properly.

So, the quilts have moved on apace as you can see.  They are now all awaiting the handstitching part of the binding process.  It's a good job it's one of my favourite parts as there are a lot of inches to cover!  Some has been started and I guess I will just work my way through them at a more leisurely pace than this past week and a half.  At least that will give me time to think about what way I want to label these Memory Quilts for posterity.