Finished Goods

Ahhh...it sure does feel good to finish a project. I really should do that more often. My first and second quilts are complete - the binding on the first is a packaged bias binding (and really isn't the right green, but I just wanted to get it done). Nothin' to write home about.

For the wonderland quilt binding, I found a red/cream ticking in my fabric stash and while I would have preferred to have seen one of the wonderland fabrics on the binding, I thought this would do nicely. Since I'm guessing this quilt will get used quite a bit, I decided to do a bias binding.

This was the first time I've cut anything on the bias and I was a little nervous about it. I've read numerous tutorials on how to cut on the bias, but I am such a visual learner that I just wasn't getting it from text alone. They lost me after "take your square and fold the corner..." Any time I see any shape described in text, I'm immediately brought back in time to my 10th grade geometry class. Let's just say that geometry and I did not mix!

So, I found this tut and got it! Lots of pictures, which is exactly what I needed! And I love her method of stacking the strips so they are ready to sew together. It didn't take me nearly as long as I expected to cut and sew all the strips into one long continuous binding strip. This probably isn't anything new to most of you, but I sure felt like I accomplished something! Surprisingly, I enjoyed finishing the back of the binding by hand (using a ladder stitch). It went rather quickly and it was a pretty relaxing task.

Oh - I forgot to tell you how I ended up quilting this baby. I did straight-line quilting down the vertical sashing (and used painters tape as my guide). For the squares, I started out by quilting 1/4" from the seam on the inside of each large square block. Then, at first, I did diagonal stitching (a big X) inside the large blocks. I finished the 3 blocks in the center of the quilt and realized that I was seeing triangles! The "X" really took away from the smaller squares and I didn't like it. So, I ripped those stitches out and ended up stitching 1/4" from each seam inside the block so it looks like all the small blocks are outlined. Does that make sense? Anyway, I liked the look much better.

While this quilt is far from perfection , I love it (but that little loopy thread in the photo above is buggin' me!). I know it will be used for many years (if it doesn't fall apart when I wash it)! And, I learned a lot from it too. Looking forward to my next one!

By the way, thank you for all your kind comments and suggestions!