Oh happy day! denim quilt update

There's one advantage to being an insomniac, I get to solve some problems in the wee hours. There were two things that were causing problems with finishing this quilt (nicknamed King Kong). The first one was that I was tying it by spreading it out on the dining room table. Therefore, the table had to be all cleared of any centerpieces, and so forth. And it was difficult to see the TV from there. But I discovered that this quilt, which was well pin-basted, could be tied in my lap on the sofa. I just hung my little scissors around my neck on a crocheted chain. This speeded up the tying process in a big way. I could tie the quilt while watching a DVD or TV show. The second problem was that it was so daunting to think about applying and hemming binding! Even though I had already calculated and cut out miles of binding, and the strips were hanging on a hanger on the sewing room door, I changed my mind on that plan. Although I have read about turning the lining to the front of the quilt and hemming it down, I had never tried that method. Luckily, there was at least an inch of the flannel backing hanging around the edges. So, I trimmed the backing to one inch outside all around. Then I put a lot of water in the steam iron, and I ironed the edges in 1/2 inch and then another 1/2 inch all around the ends of the quilt border. That was quite a lot of ironing. But there's another problem. And that was that if I just popped the edge under the sewing machine, I would get a lot of puckers in the edge. So I checked out my sewing machine handbook, and tried out a few of the stitches. I decided that if I used the blind hem stitch, and adjusted my machine for sewing on a bulky edge, that would do it. The edge would be fairly flat and neat. It worked. And I had thought it would have taken me another month to finish this quilt. I hope to have the recipients of the quilt pose with the finished quilt for a photo finish really soon.