Palm Trees--Tea Time in Bali

A little warmth and palm trees are needed after the weather we've had here in Calgary this past week.

This quilt started out as a Tea Time in Bali,  but Marilyn decided she wanted to set her blocks differently, so she came up with this wonderful sashing.

 Marilyn wanted palm trees on this quilt...the colours certainly suggest the sea and sand and tree trunks....and we wanted to highlight the sashing, so we decided an edge to edge design wasn't the best in this case.  I was a little concerned about the palm trees showing up on the blocks, with such varied and patterned fabrics, but I had quilted another quilt that had used this same bali pop, and knew the quilting showed on it, so we were good to go.

I could do each block in one pass...stitch in the ditch around the block, stitch the ribbon candy design in the sashing, and then the palm trees. 

 I had thought that perhaps the brown sashing lines wouldn't need to be stitched around, that the ribbon candy would hold them down enough, but they were a little poofy.  It was OK, except from the back it really looked unfinished, because the ribbon candy wasn't touching anything..

 So, then I stitched in the ditch around all the brown sashing lines too, and it was much better.

 Here's how I got the palm trees.  I took bits and pieces of several palm trees in a MeadowLyon designs panto I have and put them together to make them fit in the block.  I'd line up the drawing with the block using my laser light, stitch the ditch and the ribbon candy from the front, and then come into the center of the block on the ditch.  Then I'd move to the back of the machine and using the laser, stitch out the palm trees, move back to the front, finish the ditching and the block was done...no marking.

Thanks for letting me play with your quilt Marilyn!

And here's my 'oh darn' moment with this quilt.  I know it happens to other quilters, because there are online tutorials and videos about how to fix this :)  but it was a first for me.

I ran out of backing before I ran out of quilt.

I had measured the backing wrong, and consequently loaded the quilt in the wrong direction.

Fortunately, there was lots of extra backing on the sides :P   and I was able to piece the extra onto the bottom and finish the quilt.  Oops.