Tea Towel Challenge Finished!

Not what you'd call a speedy finish (this challenge began a year ago), but it's done at last!

Finishes at 26" x 60" with the hanging sticks. It sat around for a month waiting for me to make loops and to cut/paint the pieces of bamboo (from stakes purchased at a local garden center).


Got the loops-and-sticks hanging idea from something I saw online years ago, in pre-Pinterest days or I would have pinned it to show you.

I cut the bamboo with a hacksaw (it's hollow and cuts easily), sanded the rough edges, then stuffed the open ends with lots of spackle to make sure no tiny wildlife (bugs, spiders, baby geckos) will take up residence in there.

Then a coat of spray primer, 2 coats of "antique gold" paint, and a final finish with "black coffee" metallic glaze. The effect is both lighter and shinier than it looks in the pics.

Here are some details of the upper and lower corners...

 

 I used facing strips to finish the edges. These are sewn from the front by machine with a 1/4" seam, then turned to the back and hand-stitched to the backing, for a clean, no-binding edge.  Snipping the batting out of the seam allowance is a pain, but helps the edge lie flat. Here's how the facings look on the back:

That facing fabric, BTW, has been hanging around in my stash since the mid-1990s, and is a degree or two more orange than it looks here. The backing print is a William Morris reproduction from a dusty bolt I found way in the back of my LQS for something like 4.99/yard, so that's been around a while, too.

Sorry the pics aren't sharper. I took these with my new phone, which has a 16 megapixel camera: images are so high-res they had to be shrunk way, way down to fit-on-a-blog size and all that lovely crispness is lost. I guess I'll go back to my sad old 4 megapixel camera for blog photos and close-up shots.

Now all that's left is to name it something other than "TTC quilt". Suggestions??