My First Quilt - The Finale!

See here for the front and back of the quilt.

Hmmm...quilting and binding.  I am SO not brave enough to attempt free motion quilting yet.  Maybe one day...but not right now!  I decided to play it safe with straight line outline quilting.

First - the quilt sandwich.  I spread everything out on the bathroom floor - the biggest tiled area in the house which made it a lot easier to smooth and pin.  I used masking tape to hold the backing nice and firm.

Can you tell I'm left handed! :)

Then I started my quilting...  That took a while.  I had awful tension issues...needless to say my machine is in getting serviced right now...

I machine stitched the binding on the front - then spent many nights hand sewing it to the back.  Strangely I found it quite relaxing though.

The finished quilt!:

And the back.  I like the darker blue binding - kind of like a frame for the quilt.

Closeup of some of my quilting

And there is that hand stitching on the back of the binding...

With my little custom label proudly attached :)

I made a matching pillowcase out of scraps, as you can see on the little bed.

What did my son think of it - well this...



He pushes it off the bed before he goes to sleep EVERY night!  Oh well...

My First Quilt - The Back with Custom Label

Having finished the front, it was on to the back.  Winging it this time as I have no pattern.  Funnily enough - piecing this together has given me the confidence to make a complete quilt from scratch - without a pattern.

To start with I created a custom quilt label.  Swatch size was more than big enough...  I tried to make it look like a part of the Castle Peeps fabric, and did my best to colour match. 

This is what I ended up with.  It's an 8x8 inch swatch...ready to cut.  Plus - it's all my own! :)  I ended up cutting it down to about 6 x 4 I think...  I read in a number of places that you should piece your labels in so they can never be removed..  Good advice!

I chose my favourite fabrics from the Castle Peeps line for the back...and started piecing.  I did a rough outline on paper before I started.

Resulting in this at the final middle section:

And overall this is the completed back...

Next, the last piece - quilting!

My First Quilt - Part 1!

After procrastinating for what seems like an age - I finally bit the bullet and attempted my first quilt.  It's for my son, who will soon move out of his cot/crib into a toddler bed.  So I guess that gave me the motivation!

I just love the Castle Peeps fabric line from Lizzy House and luckily she designed a lovely pattern to go with it to give me a starter.  I chose the blue colourway as my son's room is blue and yellow - and changed the design to be wider to fit his bed.  I also rearranged the fabrics and swapped a few in and out to make it my own.

Isn't the fabric great?!?!

What did I learn from my experience...  That if you are left handed - SWAP THE BLADE SIDE on your rotary cutter!!  I've struggled for ages with it veering off on tangents - so much so that I had put it away forever.  Which I guess is why I didn't make a quilt until now.  So I thought I would give it one more go - with a fresh blade - which is when I had the inspiration to reassemble it on the opposite side.  Magic.  I'm now cutting like a pro :)

So, after calculating and recalculating my changes to the pattern - I set off to cut nervously through all the fabric.

Ending up with this...which will be the front

I did my best when cutting the pieces to try and get the skyline to line up - it "kind" of worked!  I got close anyway.

 Ending up with the finished top...  Which I thought looked not too bad for a first effort.



Next up - the back!