Done! Jeweled Arkansas Crossroad

My April "One Monthly Goal" is finished.

My goal was just to get the top pieced, but cold rainy weather here in Ohio gave me more time to sew and quilt...

...so I quilted it and it's bound! 

Pieced entirely from my scrap bins.

Because I needed to balance the open quilting in the colored X blocks, the neutral areas are done with a freehand wreath with large fluffy, open, bump-back feathers. 

I wanted to go for a "faceted" jewel look in the x blocks.

Sew Fine thread: light grey on all the colored areas and beige on the neutrals.  Grey in the bobbin for both.

I found a 1/2" thick 100% poly batting leftover scrap on my shelf from several years ago that was the perfect size.

As I browsed through my backings, I just happened to have plenty of this purple!

When I got to the binding I auditioned several colors, purple like the backing, orange, green, neutral, blue.....Nothing was working!  I just didn't want to break up the effect of the colored sections of the border. 

So, here's what happened:

I have never pieced a binding like this before, but it didn't turn out too bad.

Here is the quilt before and after the binding--

It melts right into the colored piecing.

I always machine bind my quilts....and I always stitch it to the back and then bring the binding to the front to top-stitch.  However, I didn't think I could do that and still match the colors.

So, I top stitched from the back.

Here's how I do it.

I fold the binding so the edge just matches up the row of stitching where I attached it to the other side.

 

With the fold exactly on the stitched row, I move the needle over one space to the right and guide the fold along the left inside of my presser foot.  Bu moving the needle over you are assured of getting a nice even topstitch on both sides.  I have to use my old Bernina 153 because  I can't override the computer on my 820 to let me move the needle over with the #37 foot. 

I hold it nice and flat with my seam ripper as I sew.

 You can easily make perfect corners too.

Binding for a lap sized quilt like this takes about 45 min to cut, stitch, fold and press and attach--front and back.

This one took about 3 hours because of the piecing, fitting the next color after turning the corner, stitching, turning the corner and stopping to attach the next color... I don't recommend it but I love it for this quilt. 

Hard to believe these 2 quilts were made from the same block pattern--just reversing the color and the neutral

. 

 Arkansas Crossroads

I love them both!

They were both pieced entirely from my scrap bins.
In case you missed the first one you can read about it here:
 Not Afraid of Scrappy Quilts


Linking up with:
 April One Monthly Goal
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Lets Bee Social
Oh Scrap!