The Moroccan Tiles quilt is finished! Quilted, bound, and ready for a quick trip to the laundromat (I don’t want to risk putting this big a quilt into my top loader machine – it would be horrible to mangle it!)
My walking foot woes on the Juki were solved with a trip to the Montavilla Sewing store in Portland where I bought it. It turned out that the lever on the walking foot that fits over the screw (that also serves to keep needles in) was slipping sideways and catching in a groove. It had completely bent a pretty sturdy screw and even ground off a bit of the lever metal. The repair guy ultimately solved it by adding a washer so it can’t slip into the groove anymore. He also smoothed out the metal on the lever so it rides without catching again. It works perfectly. Yay!

Though it seems I’ll be making a second trip there soon because all the fiddling has knocked the needle threaded out of whack and it doesn’t work now. But that wasn’t something that prevented a finish.
The center I quilted in a grid pattern on the gray sashing. It made a great diamond pattern on the back.
The narrow border I stitched on just the edges, and then I added some wavy lines to the wide border – really fun to sew and they make a good contrast with all the straight lines throughout the main section.
The binding went on quickly. I almost always do a hand sewn finish on my binding, but my cousin has a dog and I think it might get washed a lot, so I did a machine sewn finish for extra longevity. I sewed it on the back first, ironed, and then sewed down the very edge of the front.
I used the same fabric that made up the thin border for the binding, so it frames the wider purple border. My cousin came down to Portland last weekend just in time to bring it to me.
I love how it turned out, and I’m no longer afraid to make such a large quilt. My Juki’s harp handled it without much trouble – having the blocked on point helped with that I think, since I could pull the corners out of the way through the harp space. A new quilt four our queen sized bad may be in the near future.
Next up is a duvet cover for my mom, a much quicker project. Though it did take her an hour and a half in the store to pick the fabric. She and I have a lot in common – we must touch all the pretty colors!