Bonsai - Borders, Quilting and Finishing

This post is going to describe the finishing steps for this Bonsai piece. After adding the foliage, I squared up the inner orange part of the quilt and then added a flange made from cream silk fabric to the bottom and left borders. After the flange was on,  I made a border from the brown table top fabric and added it to all four sides. I like uneven borders so if it looks like one side of the border is larger than the other, it is!

Once the borders were attached I did another round of squaring up, and then sandwiched the top, batting and back.  I machine quilted this piece with my HQ Sweet Sixteen. I tried to follow the pattern on the background fabric that was left by the tin tile impression. Where I couldn't see the impression I just made up a pattern to fill in the space. I used pretty tight stitching on the background. Here is a close up of part of the background.

background quilting

For the pot quilting I stitched a curving pattern reminiscent of ammonites. It is a pattern I use quite often. In this case it gave the pot the appearance of a ceramic vase, which is what I was going for. Here is a close up.

pot quilting

I also did machine quilting around the appliqué pieces, in the foliage and on the border. The border design was just a fan shape variation and straight lines.

border quilting

After the machine quilting was done I finished the edges with a facing, 

I named this quilt “Furui Bonsai No Ki”, which means “Old Bonsai” in Japanese. The Haiku I wrote for the label reads:

"Furui Bonsai No Ki

Old Man of Nature

Silent Garden Observer

Shaped to Perfection"

And with that I will call it a day. After all, it is always a good day when you finish a quilt!

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Putting a Small Quilt to Good Use - Machine Cover

I have a few wall hanging sized quilts that I don't hang up because they don't go with my decor. They just hang in the closet and wait to see the light of day. I love to find a way to take something I am not using and fill a need with it. So, my need was a cover for my Handi-Quilter HQ Sweet Sixteen Machine.

This machine needs to be covered in two directions: One direction is the harp to the needle end, and the other is the back of the machine where the thread spools stand. They align perpendicular to each other, so instead of doing something in one piece, I decided to make two separate covers for each of these sections.

I had an "I Spy" quilt in the closet, not being used for anything at all, and cut it in two pieces to go over these two machine sections.  I used my serger to sew the edges together and finish cut edges. The front cover is the lower section shown in the photo below.

HQ Sweet Sixteen Cover

 It is open on two sides and sewn closed on two sides. I put a magnet in the open corner to help hold the cover in place. The corner with the magnet is the one where the edge angles up. You can see in the photo below how I folded the edges up to secure the magnets and fit better over the machine.

The back cover is the upper one in the photo above. It is closed on three sides and open on one side. I cut a square shape out of  the bottom to allow it to go over the end of the machine better.

It was a fast project and I've been happy with it since I made it.

Don't be afraid to cut up a quilt that isn't being used and re-purpose it. They are much more happy being out in the world than locked up in a stuffy old closet!

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