Bootiful Finished!

Thank you for all your advice yesterday about putting in pictures and paragraphing. I tried the hint about using the Edit Html bar and the bracketing and it worked! Today I'm doing this post by putting in the pictures first (and backwards) and then writing. I'll see how it goes. (Except this way takes more organizational skills than I can usually muster.)

Yesterday I spent all day in the sewing room. Such a nice way to spend a day! I got caught back up on the 365 Challenge (why am I always "catching up"?) and then went to work on "Bootiful". "Bootiful" worked out beautifully! It actually looks much nicer than the picture and I am really happy with it! Thank you Cassi!

This isn't something that I would normally think of making and I don't have anything in my house like it at all but it is just wonderful with the cowboy theme. I just love the bandana colored boot and the dyed fabric flowers are so pretty! I don't think I would have even thought up this colorscheme, red and orange and black, but it is so bright and cheery.

I used fusible web on this and then machine stitched the raw edges which was a new experience all around. I am amazed that there are so many techniques that I haven't tried in my 20 some years of doing patchwork. The machine stitching started out tricky trying to get a very narrow zig-zag stitch in black around everything. Did a bit of ripping because I didn't like the black around the flowers so changed colors on that. When I got to the machine quilting I really loosened up! Just quilted around, on, and in the area I was working on and if it needed something more just went over the first stitches and added more. I like the random look!

And I'd like to boast a little about the machine quilting on the black background fabric. I quilted lines across and then went back and put squiggles here and there. My artistic version of barbed-wired fence! Tetsu says that that's stretching it a bit far but it looks nice even if no one else knows I was trying for a fence look.

The outside borders I freely quilted daisy flowers and that was the easiest part.

And finally, following Sharon Schamber's instructions for putting on binding (thank you anonymous and Patti!) I got the binding on and it looks great! It was a lot more work Sharon's way, and I got a lot of glue on my fingers (doesn't that sound interesting. Go take a look at her website) but it does turn out well. Maybe if I do it a few more times it will get easier!