First Finish of the Year

I officially finished this quilt, binding and all. Finally! Now to make some cute pillows...

I have been working on it forever. For a while I wasn't liking it so much and so I just kept throwing it to the bottom of my WIP pile. In fact I blogged about the problems with it clear back in March. I can't even believe it has been that long. I quilted it with a large loopy pattern, hoping to be able to ease in some of the extra fabric so it wouldn't look so wonky. Well, it worked. Hallelujah! Then after washing it, it looked even better. I love the look of a crinkly quilt.  

A few of the customers that I quilt for have used a sheet as a back and I thought I would try it with a sheet that I got on clearance at Target a few years ago. I have quilted them before and they always looked just fine, but I was worried how it would look and feel after the quilt had been all washed up. Well, it still looks good. I don't know if I will make a habit out of this though since I love the feel of quilters cotton. What are your opinions on backing? 

I'm linking up at: Inspire Me Wednesday, Whatever goes Wednesday & The Weekly Creative

Simply Retro - Retro

If you've been following along with Jana's quilt along, You'll know that I am just getting this quilt in just in the nick of time (much like my high school homework, only this is much more fun)! This quilt along has been a good motivator for me to work on my projects a little more quickly than I am used to, which is great. It's fun to have finished mostly finished projects rather than stacks of  fabrics waiting to be pieced together. I just pulled my quilt off the long arm machine, in fact, I wasn't sure if I would even get it pulled off tonight so I snapped a quick picture while it was still being quilted. 

 Luckily, my kids played nice so I was able to sneak in a few more minutes than I had planned on and was able to get it all trimmed up. I'm not going to push my luck by even thinking about the binding tonight.  And here it is! The pictures are just from my phone so they aren't spectacular, but at least in this picture you can see that the fabric is hot pink and not a weird red color like the picture above shows. 

 My mom has been working on hers too, which is a very cute light grey herringbone pattern and white. She's making hers into a baby size, just 9 blocks total. I can't wait for her to get her binding on, it will really make the quilt with the darling fabric that she's chosen. Here it is pre-quilting...

And here it is post-quilting! Don't you love it? The backing is so cute, perfect for a baby girl. The binding will make it even better.

As excited as I am to have finished up this quilt, I am even more excited to start on the next one in the book. It's very cute! Feel free to follow my blog on bloglovin to see what we'll be quilting up next! 

I'm linking up at: Simply Retro Quilt Along, Sew Darn Crafty, Fabric Tuesday

What to do...

A few months ago I switched my baby girl over to a big girls bed. Well, we all know what goes along with that...a new quilt! I found some cute fabrics and a quilt pattern that I loved and got to work. 

Unfortunately, it hasn't gone quite as smoothly as I would like. Somehow I have messed things up. The strips that slope to the left (yes, I am super technical, ha!) turned out longer than the ones sloping to the right. I'm not quite sure how, but I must have gotten my seams slightly larger going in one direction. You can see in the picture how much of a difference there is. I thought I would just go ahead and sew it together to see if there was anyway I could save things without unpicking every single row. Then I hated it. So now it has sat in my closet untouched for months and my poor daughter has no quilt, just sheets and her baby blankets. 

So what do I do, unpick the whole thing or just keep sewing and hope I like it better after all the quilting and binding has been finished?? 

*This was due to my own stupidity and not the actually pattern. To see and/or buy this cute pattern, go here.

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