My First Finished Quilt for 2010

Boy am I excited! I have actually finished a quilt. It was a quilt top I did many, many years ago (about 8) and then decided to finish off for my daughter, then changed my mind and made her a different one that is still being finished. But my son liked it and decided he wanted it. So...


The quilt top was complete, it just needed backing and batting and then needed to be quilted. I went off to the fabric store (Craft Depot) and bought backing and batting and two more packs of quilting safety pins and set about marking the quilt top with a stipple stencil. I spent hours doing it. That is no easy task! Anyway, the top got marked and I laid it all out to baste. During the basting process, my daughter decided she would help me and was handing me the quilting pins, which I thought was great until I realised that she was sliding across the quilt top and wiping off a lot of my markings! Anyway, I kept basting and thought I would wing it and see what happened. 


Quilt partially marked, pins in place, machine foot, bobbin and thread all ready - I took a deep breath and started. Needless to say that I only managed about half of one stencil before I realised I couldn’t make out the pattern anymore! I got my stencil and traced it onto a sheet of paper in black marker and pasted it to the wall in front of my sewing machine and decided to wing the whole thing. I am very happy to say I only boxed myself into a corner once, and managed to avoid it for the rest of the quilt. I am really happy with the way it turned out.


This quilt was full of firsts for me. My first quilt in nearly 10 years, my first stipple quilt and my first attempt at using the Binding Mitre Tool for the binding and using a taylors awl to help help the binding on the sewing line. Normally I do one really long strip and do the mitre corners as I go but I got this cool tool that helped you mitre the binding corners without having to join your binding end pieces together. I think I need more practice with it. I don't think it worked out exactly as it was suppose to. Never mind. 

I know some use a seam ripper but this worked just fine for me.

This is the front of the quilt. I used sky blue for both the front and back. I think I still need work to keep the stippling a little more consistent in size, but all in all, I think it turned out great for a first time, and I was winging it the whole way.

The back does not look to bad, just don't look to closely as my mistakes are much more visible on this side.

And this is the finished project on my son's bed. I learnt so much doing this quilt and hope that my next quilts are even better.