Hmmm...This is going to take longer than I had thought.

I am about half way through binding my "Not Quite Amish" quilt (Or, "Still Not Amish" or another variation as I can't decide on the name). I had hoped I would be able to share a picture soon, but it looks like that is not to be. When I decided on the quilting motif for the sashing, I didn't think things through properly, and when I got to the borders I realized the motif isn't wide enough for the border. Originally I thought it would be relatively easy to extend it to fill the area, but in practice, it didn't work at all. The resulting space is too narrow to add another half motif and have it still look good, but too wide to leave unquilted. No matter, I thought, I'll just quilt some parallel lines to fill in that area. Oops, big mistake. After finishing the quilting and squaring up the quilt, those parallel lines seem to wander to and away from the binding like nobody's business. They are a disaster. Luckily, I only did one or two lines, thinking I would fill in more if needed. I am either going to have to pick them all out or come up with a fill design that will cover them up! Argh! A dense filler design would probably work, but it will tend to make the quilt stiff, at least until it is well washed. I am using Warm and Natural batting, which I like, and which is the only one I can get (a topic for another post, I think), but I need something more drapable. Or else I have to wash my quilts about 5 times each to get them softened up, and I am not that fond of laundry.

Since I can't share pictures of Not Quite Amish, I will share the small wall hangings made with the leftover blocks from my Not Amish quilts. For the Almost Amish Quilt I used a lot of (to my mind) less traditional filler motifs and practiced my McTavishing. This was all done before getting the book and video, so it is just a rough approximation of McTavishing at best. For this wallhanging, I used a very lacy design in the block and McTavishing in the background.

Unfortunately, the lacy design is totally lost in the batiks. It was good practice, though. For the second one, I went the other direction and did feathers in the block and left the background empty. Looks like it could use some more quilting in the background from the photo, though! Too late, it has already been given away.