First Quilt

Making quilts is a fascinating thing.  You take fabric, cut it up, and sew it into new fabric.  I have wanted to learn this skill for years, and the idea of having closets full of quilts made by me fills me with joy. 

Now, I have minimal sewing experience.  I took home ec. in 8th grade, and made a stuffed rabbit that I gave to a friend.  I cross-stitched for a while.  I've sewed a seam, and understand the basics, but more by reading than by doing.  But hey, I can learn anything, right?  We all can.  And now there is the magic that is the Interwebs, where directions to do any darn thing is right at my fingertips.  Intoxicating. 

So with this information, and this tutorial and this binding tutorial, I set out to make my very first quilt.  I planned to give it to a friend as a baby shower gift, so I had a definite deadline (which was good, since I can procrastinate forever).  I picked some fabrics in orange, turquoise and lime green, three colors that make me happy, and made a simple quilt top from 9" squares.  Excuse the sofa arm there in the bottom right corner.

I chose 9" squares because I was using fat quarters, so I could get 4 from one FQ.  Also, I wanted to be sure that if I turned out to hate quilting, I would still be likely to finish this quilt, and not toss it in the back of a closet and hope it disappeared.

I machine pieced the top, spray basted the sandwich, and backed it with cream flannel.  It was a surprisingly speedy process, and I was ready to quilt it.  I quilted it in the ditch, and then in an X across each square. 

I made a scrappy binding from the leftover quilt squares, and machine bound it.  Please excuse the awful lighting for these pictures.  I wanted to take them before I brought the quilt to my friend, and the sun hadn't come up yet. 

Aside from one mistake where I laid it out crooked and the backing didn't quite cover the whole back at one top corner, it all worked out very nicely.  With some messing around, I finally got everything covered, and sewed down tight.

Here it is, draped over my giant living room chair.  I didn't measure the final result, but I'm guessing it was maybe 45" by 40", give or take.

I even had some binding left over!  Which is great, because let me tell you, this is a color combo I will be using again!  Love it, love it, love it.

Here is a closer shot of the quilting.  I used cream thread. 

Goal for the future: take better pictures!