Midnight Crossing - Naming and Completion

Naming a quilt, embroidering the labels, and stitching on the binding are my final steps to completing a quilt. But when it comes down to adding the label, I need to settle on a name, which can take a while. For convenience and consistency during my indecisiveness on selecting a more personal name for this quilt, I used the working title Midnight Crossing, the same as its source pattern. Some name considerations for the final title were:

•  CHEX (for checker boards and X's)
•  RR_X-ing (since the X's look like those crossed bars for trains),
•  X-TRA (why not?) 
•  ORANGE_IS_THE_NEW_BLACK (since it is sort of for Halloween). 
•  My husband suggested X_MARKS _THE _SPOT, which appealed, but I claimed it was too long.

My issue with length mellowed and so the chosen name became X_MARKS_THE _SPOT. Now I could machine embroider my labels and hand stitch them on diagonally. I secure them in place before I attach the binding. I was glad I had made the effort to fussy cut the binding so it lined up uniformly around the quilt. I also was pleased with the somewhat military precision of the piano key border. 

To document the completion of a quilt I have heard that a straight on photo of the front as well as some artfully draped poses are recommended. My artful draping is a bit awkward, but I tried to improve the poses by including some of my fall decor. There area few closeup up photos, but most of those are in previous posts. First, here are two outdoor photos.

Then indoors with some furniture draping.

Then some closer-in views showing the binding, labeling, backing, and table decor.

Often I am asked how long does it takes me to make a quilt? Since quilt-making is not a continuous process for me, that is hard to answer. But based on my blog posts of progress, this 68½" square quilt, X_MARKS_THE_SPOT, took me about two months from mid August to mid October. I still see a few FMQ glitches that I might fix, and I may add a bit more FMQ in the sixteen blocks, but I am claiming completion. Completing this quilt by Halloween was a 2022 goal of mine and I am claiming mission accomplished! I really enjoyed working on this one!

•   Start of the kit and first six blocks (08/18/22) 
•   Continuation with four more blocks (08/23/22)
•   Completion of last six blocks (08/27/22)
•   Making nine patch corner posts (08/29/22)
•   Inner sashings and central assembly (09/12/22)
•   Adding outer sashing and borders (09/16/22)
•   Fussy cutting binding and thread selection for FMQ (09/29/22)
•   Heart quilting in blocks (10/10/22)
•   FMQ in inner and outer borders (10/14/22)
•   Displayed for Third Saturday of October (10/15/22)
•   Naming, completion and final photography (10/18/22 - this post)

Third Saturday of October 2022

For October I chose to display the black and orange colors symbolic of Halloween but in more muted tones.  The pattern I used is Midnight Crossing by Fig Tree & Company and the Moda fabric line is All Hallow's Eve. I just complete this quilt last night and have not yet written its final blog post. It measures 68½" x  68½" and the title on its label is X_MARKS_THE_SPOT.

Hang Your Quilt Day
Beginning April 2020, my quilt guild members began a tradition of hanging quilts in the front of their homes on the third Saturday of the month as a source of enjoyment for the community and as a thank you for the essential workers during the pandemic. My initial post about this practice is in my blog post dated 4/22/2020.

Midnight Crossing - Inner and Outer Border FMQ

The inner border is 1½" wide in a gray zigzag. I considered a simple wavy line, and previewed it with a clear plastic overly, as shown in the next photo. Often times less is more. But this was too little and I thought the narrow border needed more. I decided to consider what I'd be putting in the outer orange border first and before deciding the narrow gray inner border. The two border designs do need to complement each other after all. The outer border of this quilt is a 3½" wide orange mini-floral. How to quilt it?

I considered a diagonal grid to carry out the "X" theme, but decided it was too prone to being crooked. I considered a scrolling vine with sporadic pumpkins but the required marking spooked me. Then I just stopped and looked at the fabric. In reality it is a stripe. I thought a piano key border aligned with those rows of roses would accentuate the stripe and, although somewhat tedious, would be fairly easy for me to do with a high probability of success. Yes it was more ruler work but it was sure to be textural even if it did not have visual impact. I did complete it all in one day, several hours of careful lines stitched up and down with a ruler as a guide at the same spacing of the rose rows. I used a thread color that matched the background orange.

Back to the inner border. I considered stitching a simple loop design sometimes called traveling vine; I learned this design as Lazy L since my first teacher described stitching it as a cursive capital L. I considered one loop for every border straight line, then a wider spread look with one loop every other border straight line. I started with one pass of Lazy L's. I could always fill in the wider spread with a second pass to make it denser.

After seeing the effect, I ended up doing two passes offset from each other so they formed X's in the center. The X's fit in with the X theme. The quilting barely shows up here, either, like my stitched hearts in the blocks, but with much less effort expended. I am pleased that the double pass holds the inner border with a more evenly distributed texture. These Lazy L's were quick to quilt even though I did two passes.

As my FMQ skills grow, I am becoming braver with the designs I will attempt. Clearly, however, I need to get better at my choices of thread color. I prefer quilting with prints rather than solids, so I think if I want the stitching to show my thread colors need to be bolder. Most tutorials are with solid fabric and contrasting thread. Uh, oh. I have now introduced more analysis paralysis to go with my quilting endeavors. Next post will address my labeling, binding, and completion.

Midnight Crossing - Heart Quilting in Blocks

I was really, really pleased with the piecing on this quilt. The petal FMQ in the sashing and corner posts also met with my sound approval. See end of post for 9/29/22. So now I am even more timid and under more pressure not to muck up the rest. I know I am prone to overthinking things so here is the ongoing saga of my FMQ decision process. 

Decision, decisions! Analysis paralysis! I just bought some heart templates by Amanda Murphy for long arm quilting so of course I wanted to try out my new toy on the blocks. I experimented with different orientations in PowerPoint. Here is what I considered: hearts on horizontal and vertical, hearts on diagonal, hearts of different sizes, hearts with points facing either in or out and any of these options combined.

I decided on large outer hearts pointing out with small inner hearts pointing in all on a diagonal. Then I noticed the hearts in Power Point are rounded and do not have the artsy doubly-curved edges of the template hearts. I practiced the look of several sizes of these stylized hearts with templates on scrap sandwiches. Then I traced the selected heart option on clear page protectors and lay them over a block as a preview.

I did not want to take away from the piecing and the prints. I sure succeeded in not doing that! After all my agonizing, planning, and practicing, my quilting in the blocks barely shows up. Seeing my disappointment, my husband encouragingly knows what to say. "It will puff up more after you wash it." I have to be satisfied with texture and functionality rather than visual impact. On the brighter side, my errors do not show up glaringly, either. Here is the variation in visibility in the stitching on four colors of blocks: orange-centered black or gray, and black-centered mixed or orange.

On a high note, though, after 128 hearts (plus those from practice) I got pretty proficient at using my Good Measure hearts template by Amanda Murphy. They work great and I love them! With the blocks, inner and outer sashings, and corner posts completed, I move on to FMQ decisions for the inner and outer borders.