My first quilt

The finished quilt exceeded my expectations and Mom loved it. So worth staying up past midnight the night before my flight to work on it. I used the three pillow fabrics plus an additional red/yellow and a coordinating striped cotton for the back and binding. I wanted it a little bigger than the measurements in Bend the Rules, it ended up being about 52 inches square. It was tied using six strands of embroidery floss approximately 7 inches apart. The fabrics were so thick that I think machine quilting would have made it too stiff. It turned out super soft and just the right weight and heft for a cozy nap on the couch.


I actually serged all the pieces together which was really fast and solved the problem of the fabrics fraying and leaving threads everywhere. After I pieced it together and tied it, I sewed on the binding and then serged around the whole quilt for good measure (have I mentioned how much I love my serger?) Despite my late night I ran out of time so I took it with me and finished the binding by hand at my Mom's. Holy cow did that take a lot of time - three hours of hand sewing and my index finger was pretty sore by the time I was done (note to self, this is what thimbles are for so buy one already).

It got a little hairy when I was putting the layers together, but I took someone's suggestion that I use safety pins to hold them together and it was a big help, as was stretching and pinning the backing fabric down (to a full sized futon mattress) to keep it flat. The whole process was very pleasing, I loved seeing the pattern emerge and watching the quilt top grow as I sewed the strips together. Yes, quilt #1 was a success and I'm already planning the next one.