It's a long road to a finish

Today I finished the binding on my oldest flimsy, which I think pre-dates my blogging days. It was relatively quick to machine quilt, but the binding process took a bit longer. It measure 62 by 82, is machine quilted and is a  gift for my nephew, who graduated from high school last week. He lives two provinces over from me, so this is going uncle-express when my BIL heads that way next week. (The mail strike just ended here, so I couldn't get it to him before graduation.)

The first issue was finding fabric to work with the strings and the backing, since I used up all the bits and pieces already in the quilt. I found enough of a navy/neutral print that frames it nicely.

The back is an extra wide Michael Miller print that  has a teenage guy feel to it.

I machine stitched the binding to the back, and then brought it to the front and sewed a hemming stitch in the a neutral thread that matches both the quilt and the binding.

 I even got fancy with the label and stitched my nephew's name and mine in free-motion letters.

The binding took two hours -- and two weeks. It took me two weeks to get to rearranging my sewing space so I could set up my Elna permanently. (My Juki only does straight stitch.) 

See that dowel in the 2 by 4 at the left? It's holding up the extension table on the Elna, since this very secondhand sewing table was missing the supporting bar. Mr. Strings put the support together this afternoon. Thanks so much. It works great.

And since I cleaned up today, I'll show you a picture of the area around my Elna. Lots of great stuff on the wall, including a few quilts from swaps. My Juki and cutting table are off to the left along the adjacent wall. Not quite as neat over there.