Sweet River Studios

I decided to get binding that didn't really stand out. I wanted the focus to be on the quilt so I got a complimentary fabric for the binding. I cut my binding on the bias for this quilt given all the curves. That way the fabric will have a little stretch in it. Everything work out fairly well except for joining the ends. I had a bit of trouble and it got really, really frustrating but I finally got it on. Memo to me - practice binding! I machine stitch my binding on the front and hand stitch it to the back. I don't hand stitch very often so I take this time to brush up on my hand stitching skills and I find it very soothing. So after fighting with the binding a little peaceful sewing is called for. Now, I just need to add a label and call it done.

After quilting the background, I selected the border I thought would look best and got sewing. But I wanted a mitered border, which I've never done before. I watched several YouTube videos and of course they always make it sound really, really, easy and never once to they say "don't do X because then it won't work" or "watch out for Y." No. They simply say, "See its easy!" No. No it isn't. Mitered Corners The first step to mitered corners is marking your center panel. Mark 1/4" away from your corners in every direction. Sew your borders on the panel starting and stopping at the 1/4" marks. Once you get all 4 sides done, your borders will NOT be sewn down in the corners. All the borders are floppy and weird at this point. Lay all your borders flat out so that they overlap (sorry, I don't have a picture). Mark with a pen, on each fabric with a  little dot, where the two borders intersect. Next, fold your center panel...

After coloring and putting the animal tracks on the borders, I went ahead and quilted them first before attaching them to the quilt. I used Hobbs fusible batting to cover the entire thing, even though I had already had batting on each individual piece. This batting serves, what I hope is 2 purposes: First, I hope it evens things out a little and makes it all nice and smooth and secondly, I'm hoping that since its fusible on both sides I can simply iron the top, bat and backing together. I used Hobbs Heirloom Fusible Queen sized batting that I ordered from Amazon. The description indicates it is double-sided and will gently fuse your quilt together so you don't need any pin or baste anything together. Its also re-positionable. So if you get a wrinkle in your backing just, peel, smooth and fuse again. And for $28 I'm hoping it really will be that easy. I placed my backing, batting and quilt top on my dinning room table and did my best to smooth at any wrinkles in the bac...