This is Banana Candy all done!

It’s all raw Edge applique, appliqued onto Kona Parchment at the quilting stage. That is pretty much how I roll with applique always, whether turned edge or raw. It makes choosing a quilting design really simple too. I stitched around the very edge with matching colour thread, then echo quilted twice more. I’m not going to lie, I used a vast assortment of threads for quilting this to get the colours right without buying a ton of new threads. There was cotton, there was polyester, there were different brands, different weights. The polyester was better, especially on the tougher fusibles that I had used (I used a mix of what I had there too), there were thread breakages at times.

This is the first time I haven’t dared wash a quilt, I am scared of the edges fraying. I’m also not sure about the binding, I machined it on both sides and I went slow and it’s actually pretty good most of the time, but I did fall off the binding on the back at times, because I wasn’t folding it as tightly over as usual so not to cover the bananas up.

This is one of my favourite ever quilts I think. Do you think I should enter it in Quiltcon? I’m feeling like it will be an obvious no, for perfection reasons as well as the design being very regular, but I do love it for myself. I don’t want to enter if it will be a waste of money. What do you honestly think? My feelings won’t be hurt, I love it for myself.

It was even cute in the WIP stages!

STATS
Size – 55″ wide x 66″ tall
Number of blocks – n/a… but there are 88 motifs and 352 bananas total.
Time to make – About 16 hours
Fabric – Background is Kona Parchment, the bright colours are all Rhoda Ruth by Elizabeth Hartman
Binding Fabric – A half metre of a yellow Rhoda Ruth print I picked up at A Sewing Sensation a week ago.
Backing Fabric – Not sure what it is called, but I bought it at Village Haberdashery in the UK when they had a huge sale. I think it’s a Japanese import.
Threads – Honestly there are many, there’s Isacord in there, there’s Mettler Poly Sheen, there’s Coats Moon, Isacord, Wonderfil Polysheen, whatever I had that colourmatched.
Batting – Hobbs 80/20 of course!
Quilting- Echo quilted shapes, three rounds in each banana.