Bow ties for Christmas!

A while back over on Instagram (IG) I came across a quilt top sale held by the lovely Jess of Milkyrobot. Now knowing my Little Madam loves all things black, purple and pink how could I leave this one sitting there? Well I couldn't, so it came to live with me ready to be turned into a Christmas gift :)

Yes that is my camera bag in the backgound of these photos and yes I STILL used my iPhone! I am one heck of a lazy lady! 

I figured if I added a border it would be the perfect size for her to snuggle up with while watching dvd's at Christmas time, so the grey dot fabric came out again and I added a 5" border.

Spray basting is the way forward, I had this basted flat as a pancake in 15 mins! Backed in another eye watering linen check print. 

 The checks aren't as hard on the eye in real life (I am so pleased about that!) and it's only writing this blog post I've realised I do rather like these checked prints for backing quilts.

Thats when things started to go a bit wrong.

Can someone tell my machine I don't like small fragments of metal pinging off my glasses frames at high speed. 2 universals down I decided to pull out the big guns and used a jeans needle! 

Then thought bugger it and had a break.

While I didn't eat all of the chocolate I did drink all of the Bulmers and it was Lovely! 

Thank you to him in doors for seeing I needed chocolate at 9pm and going to the shop without me asking :) 

Post chocolate I headed back to get the quilting finished.

I used to really enjoy FMQ but my stitch length has been known to be a bit iffy so when I'm making quilts for the shop I either straight line quilt them or stipple/meander as I know I wont mess them up...but I really wanted to try something different with this one. 

I've had Rachel at Stitched in Color Chrysanthemum quilting tutorial earmarked for ages and thought why not! 

As with all FMQ that I do it started off shaky and I thought I'd made a huge mistake, then I got a little better and by the last one I was almost happy with how the chrysanthemums were turning out. 

I did have a little rippling around the edges of the quilt but I can live with it.

The last thing I did was to audition binding fabrics, it has been narrowed down to these two and I think looking at them today I'll end up going with the black dots to tie in with the Echino glasses. 

I'll let you know how it turns out! 

As a parting question does anyone have any thoughts on how to quilt The Great Wave off Kanagawa? What a random question that is!

 You can just see it hanging in the background of the first two photos. I have plans to turn it into a wall hanging but I'm not sure how...yet.