Variegated Piping/Binding done!

Happy Memorial Day to you.  It's started off horribly here.  All 5 us us seem to have gotten a nasty head cold at the same time.  Normally it comes in waves, but everyone started feeling rotten yesterday.  My oldest is marching in a parade today, and we all have to go stand and watch later.  He's trying every ounce of patience we have (and anybody that knows me knows I have none to begin with).  Nothing like starting a gorgeous day off horribly when he refuses to walk 2 blocks with me to where he's supposed to be meeting the band.  Completely refused.  Made me drive him.

I finished the last stitches on the binding last night.  Looks OK - good enough that I won't redo any sections like I usually do.  I think I really prefer bias binding; it goes on looking better.  Good lessons learned.  I did my usual piped binding.  The piping adds a bit of structural rigidity to the edge of the quilt, and it is pretty.  In keeping with the freakishly loud and bold colors of this quilt, my piping is made from 50 or so 7" pieces of the batiks used in the quilt, creating a graduated rainbow effect around the quilt.  Here's the piping in a roll so you can see all the colors...

The piping is stitched so that the color of the piping is different from the HST's and the ribbons of the outer border.  It's completely colorful. 

Here are a few corner shots...As you can probably see, I hace done just a touch of painting on this quilt to bring out some of the quilting details.

I need to hand stitch a sleeve, and send fabric off to a bloggy friend who is making me a label.  There are a few crystals still to stick on, and a few rust spots to hopefully cover.  I'm losing interest in the quilt quickly on account of all the problems it caused in the last month.  I'm not entirely thrilled with how the Glide thread has tensioned in some places, but it is too late to fret too much about that.  I'll probably just keep it for shows that are not exclusively for machine quilting.  The creativity, piecing, and applique ought to gain me plenty of points.

If you are in New England, the first show it will go to is my home state show - The Maine Quilt show in late July.  Since I won best of show there last year, I really want to send a good quilt.  Though I think this had the potential for doing well, I'm not loving it as of late.  Now, I am just glad to have it nearly finished.  I'm also planning to send it to the Lowell Quilt Festival - so if you are in this area, you can see it and give me your impressions.