I am in LOVE with Orange

My friend Lori told me once you go Minkie, you won't go back.  I always envisioned it to be stretchy and hard to work with.  But she assured me it was not.

One of her quilts that won at the Gulf States Quilt Asso (GSQA) Show earlier this year to the Modern Guild meeting last month.  And I got to feel the weight and heft of her quilt.

It was wonderful and I made a mental note to try it.

Click on the pictures to supersize them.

When Frank and  were at Hobby Lobby the other day I saw  some incredible ORANGE Minkie.

And bought a yard and a half with my 40% off coupon.

I quilted the Orange Tabby quilt today with the luscious orange minkie on the back.

Don't you love the orange scissors with the orange quilt?







Figuring that minkie would not take close quilting I used an open sweeping meander pattern.  And the bonus for that was that it finished up quickly.

It was easy to load and not stretchy at all.  I felt the needle drag with the deeper pile, but all I needed was an adjustment to the tension on the upper side.





I guess I could have also changed the tension on the bobbin since I

use a Towa gauge.  But usually I can fix the tension with the upper thread guide.



Some people talked about the shedding but I really didn't find that there was much of anything on my floor when I finished putting it on the frame or back in the sewing room when I was fooling with the fabric getting it ready.

I used a brown bit of fabric to bind it with.  I like the way the darker brown framed the entire quilt.  It closed it in visually and I think that is what was needed after I drew the eyes WAY out with that wild light border.






This time I chose to do a machine finished binding.  And boy did it go quickly!  I have attempted

machine bindings before and failed miserably.  To help with the folding of the binding over the edge,  I decided to glue the entire binding down before I sewed the top seam.

Much better!  Not perfect, mind you, I had to slow the machine down since I tend to have a speed demon approach.









The trick is using washable glue if you do this.  I put the glue on the binding, folded it over and then ironed it down.





When I finished I went around my yard, my house and my neighbor's yard finding interesting and fun ways to take quilt photos!

Orange quilts are a blast, I don't know why I waited so long to make one!

This one is, of course, Orange Tabbys are the New Black Cats.!