One Less UFO

There is such a wonderful feeling of satisfaction that comes from finally completing a UFO, especially when it is a gift for someone else.  I talked about this wall-hanging recently, and now I am happy to report it is finished and hanging in its new home.  I liked this pattern so much that I decided to stretch it over a frame rather than just hang it from a rod through a sleeve.   

I had only done this one other time, and even then I didn't have any instruction............ I just sort of did it.  (Kind of the way I cook these days.)   The last time, (when I made this wall-hanging in 2002) I completed the quilting and then added a wide border which I stretched around a frame made from 1 by 2's.  I simply thumb-tacked the border to the inside of the frame.  The corners ended up a little too bulky, but since it was "just" for me and since it hangs nicely in my breakfast room (and since I didn't know what else to do with it!) I decided to leave it as it was. 

This time I assembled the same kind of frame, but instead of a wide border, I attached a wide binding.  The corners of the binding had just enough slack....... 

.....so that they could fold over the corners of the frame a little more neatly.   (I still used my ingenious thumb-tacking method to secure it to the inside of the frame.)

The corners didn't lay down perfectly flat (which, of course, drove me crazy) so I used the tips of my scissors (VERY carefully) as a stiletto and tucked the excess fabric in and then hand-stitched it down.  

Then, I had to hand-quilt that little one-inch square in the corner of the shadow, because even though I had checked the quilt several times, that tiny little section had not been quilted.  There is nothing like the "punch and stab" method of quilting when it is needed!

The other evening we loaded it into the car (very carefully since I wasn't thinking that 44" is a pretty wide item to load into a car) and drove it to our son and daughter-in-law's home in Alabama.  My dear Hubby helped me hang it in their bedroom last evening and it really looks great with their Glorified Nine Patch made from the same fabrics.  

I need to frame my wall-hangings more often.  I kinda like the way they look!  Now to tackle a few more of those UFO's...............