Halloween Quilt- the Devilish Detail's in the Binding!

I am making this Halloween wall hanging from a kit of Jason Yenter In The Beginning Fabrics.  The autumnal leaf wreath with Jack O' Lantern decorations originally had a Bat bow worked into it but I left that out because I think bats are creepy and I kept the jolly Jack O' lanterns.  I pieced the top fairly quickly and though I am in CA I shipped it off to my daughter's quilter  in OK who does awesome free motion quilting.  The pumpkins were appliqued even though I prefer piecing to the "A" word.

I fussy cut the binding from some coordinating striped fabric very careful to get a row of jack o' lanterns lined up just so.  Here is both sides of the binding.  Either the cats will be inside and pumpkins will be showing or vice versa.  Can't have my cats and pumpkin (pie) too!

I just now figured out that I have to sew it to the back of the quilt and bring it around to the front to get the pumpkins to show.  This means I must do the hand stitching on the front.  I have the vague recollection that I intended to machine stitch the binding on and so that was why I cut it to wrap to the front.  I really need to keep a notebook to remind me of my decisions.  Actually, even though I am new to this blogging I have referred  back to my past blogs to see how I have done stuff! 

Whether I do cat binding or jack o' lantern, it needs to wrap to the front otherwise I should have put these motifs aligned with the raw edge and not the fold.  I just now realized the decision to hand or machine bind affects how to cut the binding if it has a feature I am trying to display.  I was leaning toward hand stitching it but now, with this new wrinkle, I think I will just go ahead and get it DONE by machine. Here is the binding pressed to the front and clipped, ready to stitch.   The grey stitching line is from attaching the binding and not the final fastening after being folded over.  It will be covered by the edge of the binding.  I think for the top stitching of the binding I will use a rust colored thread and use a zig-zag stitch to echo, on a smaller scale, the line along the stripe that says Happy Halloween. I will straddle the fold.

I think a ribbon at the fair is out of the question with machine stitched binding but I was never a contender for that anyway.  After all, what is the intended end use?   I plan to hang it on my wall for a few weeks out of the year.  Hope to complete this for TGIFF.

Here is a summary (and reminder list for me) of what other irons I have in the fire.  

Ongoing projects:

1. Complete binding on Halloween quilt
2. Knit on cream/red/navy 2010 winter Olympics ski cap
3. Bind Tool quilt
4. Border Doll quilt
5. Pick design/pattern for D&N baby quilt- request colors pink, pale purple, pale lime green

No progress:

• Get Fire and Ice from closet and decide backing
• Grinch quilt
• Layout mask fabric hexagon quilt on design wall
• Get chicken quilt from closet and revisit to make bigger or call good enough

This week's stats:
Completed  projects-0
New projects - 1
Currently in progress- 6

Closing