Flip side

For the past couple of days I've been spending hours and hours on the dragon quilt. Progress is very slow, but I love being able to listen to the radio all day while sewing.

The double-sided nature of the beast means taking care at every step. One seam I had to re-do yesterday, down one side, took an hour - rip and pin and check and repin; sew and check and rip again... Even so the fabric on the other side needed some adjustment, and basting together before it could be machine quilted.

Mostly the borders go on in "sew and flip" style, making a line of quilting on the other side. It's especially complicated as I'm changing The Grand Plan all the time, after seeing the results when the border is actually on.

At the end of the week, the wide borders on the pieced side are on, and the border before that has been quilted -The fabric with the Noh actors is quite different from the pieced top - it might need some integration with a bit of applique - which will take a while to plan and execute, before borders on the other side go on, supplying quilting for this border -
There wasn't enough "men" fabric for a top border, so I'll be using these in combination - and in big pieces -
The stripey strip below them was left over from the previous piecing, and might go on after the red&blue fabrics, rather than before - I'll decide once the red&blue have been pieced.

A closer look at the quilting over the stripey border on the pieced side -
Really it fits into the borders on the dragon side. As for the quilting line on the pale border, which is how the "men" fabric is attached on the other side - I'm not bothered about the inconsistent width on different borders; it's much more important that the line is straight within each strip. That took a lot of pinning and checking!
From the amount of batting that's visible, you can imagine how many rounds of strips will be going on this side.