Only two more sleeps!

We'll soon be leaving on our five week trip to places warmer than here! First stop Portland, Oregon. Due to the wonders of the International Dateline, we leave Wanganui at 1.00 pm on Saturday, travel for 26 hours and arrive in Portland at 5.30 pm the same day. And I'm so close to getting the Elemental Challenge quilt finished. Its been a bit of a race.

Look here: the long shot shows you the quilt, all quilted. It just needs to be trimmed, bound and have the label put on. Then I need to make a travelling bag for it and post it. The labels are printed (one for the quilt, one for the bag), the entry form is completed and the cheque written. If nothing important crops up for me to do tomorrow (apart from my planned tasks) then I should get it finished. Fingers crossed for me please!

The second two photos are close ups of the quilting, the lower part is quilted in strata lines and the upper quarter with leaves. Heavier, slightly arched lines were quilted across the quilt first and the close quilting is kept in between those lines.

You can't see it on the photo but the quilt is quite wavy at the edges. If you have any ideas on how to alleviate that as I put the binding on I'd love to hear them. I'm thinking of cutting the binding to match the length through the centre length and width of the quilt and pinning the sides to fit the binding. I don't like the finish at the corners when the binding is done like that instead of being turned around the corners though. Has anyone mitred binding at their corners? Do you think that would work?

If you want to follow our travels they will be recorded here by one or other of us, on this blog, whenever we can get access to a computer. I'll try to get time to post a pic of the finished quilt tomorrow but I might not manage it. I'm still hoping to get the sewing room vacuumed before I leave... Helen and Frances are coming on Sunday to play there!