WIP Wednesday: Dealing with the Fireplace of Shame

Can you believe it’s WIP Wednesday again, no nor can I, but thanks anyway Tami for hosting, and as ever go to Tami’s blog to see WIPs by lots of talented people. Well, I have measured out my life in WIP Wednesdays rather than coffee spoons, but, this is what I’m working on at the moment. First a clue.

Today we had The Kills. Good for quilting to. And how cool are those slippers, hey hey hey?

Yes. That combination of one foot properly shod in a fluffy slipper against the cold and one foot naked in order to feel the foot pedal, along with the fabric, mess, and loud music can only mean one thing. I am digging out my quilt tops and I am backing and binding those suckers. Hurrah! So, today I have managed to finish my small art quilt which I am going to hang over the dodgy fireplace. I have decided we are going to have honest photographs on this blog and I am not going to pretend I am an attractive person leading a stylish life because, I am not. So, I am going to show you just how dodgy the fireplace is, and you will see that it is not conceivably possible for me to screw up the binding on this quilt enough that it will look worse than what it is going to cover.

No part of this house is too depressing for Partner to sneak a stack of books in

I know I should get a builder in to deal with the fireplace, but, in my defence, I am dealing with the garden at the moment. I had a man round today to quote for a new fence, and all the time he was measuring, I could see he was thinking, ‘oh, God, look at this ivy. Just move. That would be easier’. I could see it in his eyes. Anyway, that is enough of my Home Improvements Angst and we will move on to Quilt Binding Angst. I am not good at binding quilts, and I am confused by mitred corners. I used this tutorial, which I thought was helpful and straightforward, but, (and this may make sense to quilters or it may not), I do not understand how to vary the depth of my corners. Does it vary according to how far you stop before the end of the seam, or, how big a seam allowance you use when you are sewing the binding to the edge? Does that make sense? Only, I seem to get what I am given, which is fine, but sometimes in life it is nice to be able to make a choice. This is what I ended up with,

The corner is slightly too short. Why? How? What to do? It is a mystery. What does it all mean?

which is passable, but, I don’t entirely feel in control of the process. I might try binding the next quilt with square corners, I don’t know. I dug out my quilt which was made by my grandmother (Nana Bessie) to look how she had bound hers, and, she hadn’t! She hadn’t at all! It is two quilt tops sewn together, with no batting.

No batting! No binding! Call the Quilt Police

This is anarchy! Sadly Nana Bessie is no longer with us, so I can’t ask her why she made the decision to finish her quilts like this, but if she was still here, she would probably say ‘Oh, Susie, that’s the way you’re supposed to do it’ in a brisk and dismissive kind of way, then she would purse her lips at me and give me the News Of The World and a polony sandwich. Then she might make a trenchant remark about the size of my hips and wander off to landscape the garden and bring peace to the Middle East before putting some beetroot on for lunch.

If you look at it from a distance the rows almost look lined up properly. This is not true though

Anyway, this is what I ended up with. It’s ok, isn’t it? It’ll serve its purpose. One thing it did do, which I think is going to save me a lot of heartache and despair later, is make me realise that quilting without a long-arm machine and a quilting foot actually isn’t all that easy. I’m eyeing up the Very Ugly Quilt Top next, and I’m wondering if I might just hand quilt it. That’s a way off, though, because I’ve got to scrabble about and piece the back together next. God! When I could just buy one from Debenhams! (I’m joking, honestly. Go the DIY revolution! Even when it bloody takes forever!).