Sewing Project - Quilt 10 - Appliqued Leaves Two

Another quilt finished but it took me a week!  There were a lot of challenges and mistakes this week.  Cabin fever?

Color was the first challenge which often happens with blues.  I tried yellow and blues but I finally settled with a textured cotton fabric in warm greens.

Challenge #2 was using leftover fabric which led to piecing.

Finished Size: 41.00" W x 49.5" T

Front: Appliqued Batik Leaves, Brocade textured cotton fabric in warm green. 

Pieces:
6.25" Squares for leaves
3 inch soft suede sashing
Warm Green textured cotton fabric rectangles 10.5" tall x 11" wide

Accents: Appliqued Batik Leaves

Backing: Warm Green floral print fabric 100% cotton. The 2 pieces were not wide enough so the gap had to be filled with a piece of cotton. I  chose a warm teal piece of cotton.


Batting: Flannelette Sheet leftovers
  
Thread: Grey thread on a cone dispensed with my Christmas gift.
Binding: Warm Teal cotton fabric cut to 2 5/8 inches wide and 200 inches long.
You can check out this
Fool Proof Quilt Binding video for how I now do this.

Binding stitching: Stitch in the ditch.  I pinned very closely and had near perfect capture of the folded edge on the back. Used grey thread

Quilting: I assembled the quilt with Mom's Quilt As You Go method starting on the right hand side. quilted the Ginger Fabric panels with 1/4 inch top stitching. The quilting the rectangles was done with a grey thread.

Lessons Learned: 
Using leftover fabric brings some challenges.  Having pieced the backing I decided to off set the column of blue to the other side of the leaves on the front.  When I came to quilting this presented a problem because I did not want to cross the blue strip. Should have been both on the same side.

The flannalette I used as backing was in several pieces.  I should have created a layer of flannalette before I put in between but I did not. Bad idea.  I just pinned it but ended up with a pin stuck between the layers.  I did have to open a seam to get it out.


I had the flannalette bunch in between the front and back layers.  I can't tell the hours spent getting it back in place so I could quilt the squares.

Silky thread - Bad Idea - I chose it because I thought it matched the green pretty well but because it was silky and shiny it stuck out like crazy.  I had to rip it all out. Sewing tired and late at night is not the best practice.

Bent straight pins - really!  I bent several straight pins while pinning the binding.  This warm teal cotton and the textured cotton seemed to be too much for these.  You can imagine my fingers if the pins look like this.

The textured cotton did not seem to have a right and wrong side.

The warm teal worked better with the backing than the front of the quilt so I would have preferred using the soft suede from the front.  I should have tried using to piece the back as well.  I may not have enough but it would have been worth checking.   It is what it is.