Completed Present/Project: Green and Purple Baby Quilt

Ta-da! It's finally done! (And several days before my September 1st deadline!)
And it is... a baby quilt! Adam's cousin recently (very recently) had a baby girl, and this is going to be her welcome-to-life present! Adam's mother picked out the fabrics to coordinate with the bedding already chosen, and asked me to stitch it up. And now I'm finally finished!


I cheated a little bit and used pre-made satin binding to bind the quilt instead of making my own pieced binding. But I actually think it looks nicer this way - the dark purple coordinates with the purple fabrics, and the satin binding adds another nice texture to the quilt. I machine-stitched the binding, which I'm not 100% happy with, but at least this way I know it's sturdy and strong and ready to endure some abuse by baby. I had originally hand-stitched one side of the the quilt, but wasn't happy with how it felt.


It's not a perfect quilt, but what quilt ever is perfect? It's cute and appropriate for this new baby girl. And I'm proud of myself for completing it and learning to do free-motion quilting in the process! And I got to use the first of my new labels.

WIP: Quilting Done!

Last night, I finally finished quilting the purple and green baby quilt. Look at how many safety pins I used to pin it together! Stopping to take them all out as I was quilting was a pain, but was worth it to have a nicely-basted quilt. Of course, I had also used the spray basting, but I didn't trust that alone.
Next step... binding the quilt. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to hand stitch or machine stitch the binding. Hand stitching would look nicer, but I'm afraid it won't be as strong.

WIP: Quilting Almost Done!

Whoo-hoo! I'm 3/4 of the way done with the free-motion quilting, and I've run through 3.5 bobbins of thread so far - this is the only reason I stopped. I'm determined to get this done tonight! My poor neighbors... I hope they can't hear my sewing machine roaring away.
Now the next question is... how am I going to bind it?

WIP: Free-Motion Quilting

I've learned a few things about free-motion quilting since I started on this quilt last night. First, it's physically arduous - shifting around the mass of the quilt wears on your arms. Second, it becomes incredibly boring after the first twenty minutes or so. Third, it's very time-consuming. And lastly, beware of the length between stitches that you start with, because then you're committed to it for the rest of the quilt.
As you can see, my stitch lines aren't very far apart, so it's taking me even longer! And it's definitely not the most beautiful work I've ever done, sadly. Free-motion quilting is way easier on the mini quilt sandwiches I was practicing on. It's hard to be creative - or even consistent - when doing it on a real-sized quilt. But I'm going to keep plugging away at it, and overall, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turning out!