A Finished Project

In the car on the way to Ocean City last weekend, I had a little sewing to do.  I had to finish sewing one side of the binding of my first quilt.  It was a gift for my sister-in-law, Jenny and niece, Charlotte, who will be arriving in June.

I am so excited that I finally finished my first quilt!  And I love how it turned out.  In fact, I'm a little sad that it's no longer here for me to admire.  After I gave Jenny the quilt, I had to take some pictures because I hadn't had the chance to take any as I was still sewing at the last minute.

A few years ago, when I was living in Gig Harbor, Washington, I thought I would make a quilt.  I found some intricate pattern on the internet and figured it wouldn't be too hard to cut out the triangles that I needed to make the quilt.  I was so wrong.  I don't think I had the right equipment and I didn't realize exactly how patient I would need to be to cut really straight lines to make all the triangles the exact same size.  Then, I decided to just cut out tiny squares and put them all together but that wasn't working either.  So that quilt is just a tangle of crooked strips and crooked squares sitting in a box in the closet.

A few months ago I stumbled across a website called the Moda Bake Shop.  Every other day or so there is a new sewing project on there using Moda brand fabrics.  I learned that you can buy precut fabric and I found a quilt that looked pretty simple so I decided to try my hand at quilting again. And Moda's fabric lines are so beautiful that I want to make something with all of them.

I decided to make a Snuggly Layer Cake Throw, using a layer cake, which is a stack of 10x10 squares.  There was a little cutting and trimming involved but once I started making it, I realized I was actually going to finish this quilt.  I had been holding off on buying the fabric for the back until the top was finished.  I think I went to the fabric store about a dozen times buying all the thread and binding and tools that I needed.  I used multiple tutorials on the web about how to do the actual quilting and how to finish the quilt with the binding.

Jenny is planning to decorate Charlotte's room in brown and purple so I found a line of fabric called Gypsy Rose (from Moda) that had some pretty purple and brown in it, and some pink too.  For the back, I used material called Minkee in a chocolate brown.  I used a premade binding in purple to finish it.  The Minkee is super super soft and so snuggly.  I quilted using straight lines (per the tutorial), but some day I will figure out how to make all the swirlies that are on some quilts.  

And now I think I'm hooked on quilting.  Beautiful fabrics, modern, simple designs and all the right equipment are making me think I should do a few more of these.  In fact, the second one is already started.  I have another niece or nephew due in August.