Finished! I spy a rainbow quilt

 Hello everybody,

It's gone pretty close to the wire, but I have finished my I Spy a Rainbow quilt!

As I mentioned in my previous post, this was already basically a finished top, it just needed quilting and binding.

I hand quilted - here's a couple of shots of it in my hoop.

Once that was done, I cut off the excess batting so it was ready for the binding.

I chose a stripy rainbow fabric for the binding, to give it a distinctive frame. It's similar to the fabric used in the central hexagon flower, but much thinner stripes. I made the binding strips on the grain rather than on the bias so that the stripes would come out horizontal/vertical rather than diagonal. I am very pleased with the job I did on a couple of the binding strip joins - look how neatly pattern matched these are!

I stitched the binding on to the front with the machine and then hand stitched it down on the back.

On a suggestion from a friend, I added in a last-minute I-Spy image into the binding. This quilt was originally intended for my middle child, so this detail is for him. Also, fussy cutting into a binding is not straight-forward, I am so happy this worked the way I intended.

And that was it! The quilt is finished!

For the back of the quilt, rather unusually for me, I used a single piece of fabric, rather than piecing a back. I actually bought this fabric for the purpose of backing this quilt when I first finished the top several years ago.

The extra strip of rainbow stripes at the top is a hanging sleeve that means it can hand neatly at the Festival of Quilts. You might also be able to spot a small white rectangle in the bottom right hand corner. This covers up the label for my entry so it is anonymised for judging.

What does show up nicely on the back is the quilting. I particularly like what I did around the central stripy hexagon flower.

I am really pleased with how this quilt turned out! Here's a few close-ups.

You can see this quilt in person at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in just under two weeks! After not going last year while The Move took over my life, I am also going again this year - I will be there on the Saturday and Sunday if anyone wants to come and say hello. I can't wait to see my quilt hanging there, and also to prepare the return of the Genevieve Awards.

Thanks for reading!