Variety:The Spice of Life

I am definitely the type of person who thinks that variety is the spice of life.  This may sound funny from someone who has been married to the same person for almost 38 years.  But it is true...and no doubt what attracted me to quilting and sewing was the endless variety of fabric to choose from..  What is also surprising, since I do like endless variety, that it wasn't until last year that I purchased my first jelly roll.  It was purchased with the thought in mind of bringing  LOTS of variety to my coiled fabric bowls.  I had endless enjoyment playing with all those 2 1/2" strips and deciding which fabrics would go where. and was delighted with all the multifaceted  bowls that came out of that jelly roll, no two alike.  It led me to purchase another jelly roll, this time batiks.  I had spied a table runner type quilt as you go project in a magazine a few months ago using silks.  OBVIOUSLY it was not going to be used as a table runner but was a mighty good looking wall handing that implemented the idea that I had been working with the rainbow coiled bowls, color progressions.  As soon as I saw that batik jelly roll, I knew what I would make with it. and also get to try my hand at a quilt as you go project.  

One of the things that has kept be interested in sewing over all these years is not only the fun of playing with fabrics but also, learning new technics.  Not only are there a wide variety of different technics but also as my Grandmother would say, many different ways to skin a cat.  I can't imagine why anyone would want to skin a cat but within the realm of sewing there are many different ways to do things.  A good example of that is not only quilt as you go but also, different ways of finishing off ones quilt with binding.  The "traditional" way which is the one I have always used involves bias strips and is the best way to finish any quilt that is the size of a baby quilt or larger.  It is the method I used when finishing off my fist quilt as you go table runner which I blogged about on Feb. 13th.   Since I had plenty of this mottled  dark teal fabric that coordinated nicely with my jelly roll batiks, it was a good choice for backing.  The finished size of the runner was going to be 15" X 42".  I had more than enough of this fabric to overhang it all the way around the runner by a couple of inches  HEY, why don't I use that binding method where one uses the quilt backing as the binding?    I tried to take pictures of it while I was executing the binding but the fabric was too dark for it to show up.  I did find a very good link out on the internet which did a great job of describing this technic and how and where it should be used.. Here is the link   http://blog.sewbittersweetdesigns.com/?p=3846  .  The one thing I did differently from this tutorial is that I used nylon thread to sew it down and a hemming stitch.  I stitched in the ditch around the edge and the hemming stitch jumped up along it and caught the edge of the binding.  Since I was using nylon thread in the top of my machine, the stitching is virtually invisible.  Some people (purists) think of this as a cheat, to bind ones quilt this way, I do not.   I think of it as part of that endless variety of ways to do things.  Just another way to skin a cat!

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