One Done, One Begun.

Nothing like a deadline to motivate me, I got the Cross Stitch Quilt all finished up today.Here is a picture before the scallops were quilted, showing how I quilted all the short lines that are all around the edges. Instead of cutting my thread, I just let it travel between the two lines. I'll have to go trim up all of those later, but for now they are out of the way and I can quilt all the scalloped lines. (See the little dots between the two lines of cross stitched scallops? Those are the quilting lines on this quilt)
After the quilting was finished I trimmed up the edges to prepare for the binding. The binding is out of the same pink satin used for the back. I was a little worried, because this stuff frays if you look at it wrong. So I handled it very carefully, and it wasn't too bad. I stitched it to the back of the quilt first, then pressed it toward the edge, turned it to the front and top-stitched it down. It came out fabulous!
Before binding - so pretty! After I get the threads trimmed I will take some nicer pictures to document it. Rumor has it that the maker of the top has another for me to quilt - I'll look forward to it, this was a really nice project.
Here's the next one on the list. It's a beautiful stained glass quilt that my student and I have been working on for a year now. The top is finished and I get to do all the quilting. The pattern says to quilt cloud shapes on the sky - what do you think? I like it, and think the variegated thread is really nice here. I'll be adding some lines from the star to the outside in metallic thread later. The quilting is doing a great job of taking in the bagginess from the bias tape being stitched on. I'd like to finish this one by the end of the month, so you'll see more on it as I go!

Time to go work on my hand-quilting now. It was a good day for stitching!