In keeping with the vibe of the fabric, I decided to use sashiko motifs for the quilting.

The centre panel is interlocking circles, achieved with circle rulers borrowed from my quilting buddy the Quirky Quilter.

Lots of threads to bury as many starts and stops with this design
Completed Orange Peel design in centre panel

The red sashing is quilted in clam shells. A circle ruler, using only half, was my guide.

Clam shell quilting in sashing using circle ruler

The outer border is straight line diamonds. These were more difficult to keep aligned than I had anticipated.

Using my invaluable Line Tamer ruler for the diamond grid

The backing was from my stash. The centre strip – not quite long enough – is a Japanese styled floral. To widen it, I used leftover fabric that had been a border on a previous quilt. Not Japanese, but I thought it was ok as backing. I used every cm of the light colour fabric backing, and it was just this much <-> too short, so I added a strip of another leftover along the top (on the left in this picture).


Backing on my design wall prior to sandwiching the quilt
Back of quilt

Wadding (batting) is 60/40 wool/polyester. It has a high loft making the quilting design more pronounced.

Recently I read somewhere (?) of a quilter who used an overlocker (serger) to finish the edge of her quilt before attaching the binding. My quilt was already trimmed to size, my overlocker was sitting right there on my work table, so I decided to give it a go. It took only about 10 minutes.

Certainly sewing on the binding and hand sewing the reverse side has been easy enough, but I can’t really say that it was actually easier than usual. I’ll try it with some more quilts before I make a definite recommendation.