Nicene Creed Quilt: In Progress

Last Friday I shared the early stages of my Nicene Creed quilt, and I wanted to come back today to share some progress on the borders.  I mentioned in the last post that I wanted to populate the quilt with my animals residing in scenes featuring flowers, trees, and landscapes of home.

I started with all my animals.  I turned them all into angels for the quilt, there are lots of angels and angelic beings in illuminated manuscripts so it seemed fitting.  These were tricky,  a couple of them use touches of paint/marker, but they're mostly made from different pieces of fabric.  However, they're very small.  Most are about 1.5" x 3", so it was tricky to try to capture them.

My Angel beloved.  She was my very first dog as a grown-up.  All black, with gold accents.

Samcat! He's probably the one I'm least happy with,  I think it's the face that bugs me.  These guys are just so small and I'm not very good at faces to begin with.

The Bullett Dog!  He's the one I still miss the most, I had him for so long and he was such a good little sausage dog.   He chewed up so many things!  The pictures with signs-around-necks were from a Christmas card photoshoot many years ago.  One side spelled out Joy and the other side was a "dog-shaming" caption.  Bullett's said: "I eat anything I can find and then I pee on it afterwards.  I steal all the rawhide bones from my siblings and won't share even though I don't like them. *Not Sorry* -Bullett"

Pumpkin.  I like the way she turned out.  She was a bouncy active dog, and I love this arched back pose.

 Missy.  Precious Missy.  She was such a prima donna and we loved her anyway.  I didn't capture her exactly either, but maybe you can at least get the feel of her.

My Bentley!  He's such a good boy.  Very much old dog now, he falls off of sidewalks and bonks into things twelve times a day (he's almost completely blind).  Still super sweet, I try to love on him when Blue is off barking at something else, because otherwise Blue just pushes him out of the way.  Serves him right though, Bentley spent year pushing Bullett out of the way....  Bentley's dog shaming sign says: "I grab things off of the counter and out of the trash to share with the other dogs. *Such a helpful brother* -Bentley"

Shooter dog!  She's my precious brown dogs!  She's still happily living, but she lives with my parents now with her mama (Swatch) who my parents adopted.  Shooter was mine but my parents kidnapped her a few years ago, and I get to visit her and give her lots of snuggles when I go home for a visit.  She's really turned into an easygoing dog, but of course she lived at my house during her puppy years.  Her dog-shaming sign says: "I chewed up mommy's new sneakers, my daddy's house shoes, and my mommy's new magazine.  Then I barfed up my breakfast. *Not ashamed* -Shooter"

And last but definitely not least, big precious Blue dog!  He's such a big galoot, he always flops over on his back to waggle his legs in the air and get a big belly rub.

Most of these guys are eventually nestling under trees, all that we had growing up.  

Cherry tree

Ponderosa pine

The ponderosa actually also includes Silky and Puffy (my sister's two pet rats) in honor of all the rodents we've had as pets over the years.  Here you can see how I used shiva paintstiks to create the pine needle clusters.

Apple tree

Piñon pine

Aspen trees

Here's a picture in progress as I was working on the interlocking elements around the top.  Trying things out!

I'll show many more up close pictures of the quilting when I show the final quilt tomorrow (too many pictures for one post), but I wanted to talk about how I finished the edges.  In the picture above, you can see that the silk sari had a wonderful gold-thread woven selvage edging.  I really wanted to have that as the edge, but the quilt was just a bit too wide (proportionally) and I didn't want a binding or facing to cover up the pretty edge.  Finally I decided to carefully cut off the golden edge and then use it as the facing, only sewing it onto the back and wrapping it around the front.  I did that after all the quilting except the background fills in the borders was done.  That way the background quilting could go right up to but not over the gold edging.  In the picture below you can see the edge of the pink fabric on the left where I cut off the gold border.  

I sewed the gold border (right sides together) to the back of the quilt, then flipped it around to the front and stitched it down on the front.  This is what the finished edge looks like from the back and front.

Afterwards I went back in and filled in the background quilting, you'll be able to see that in the pictures tomorrow.