I Can Finally Share --


I used to quilt a lot but for a number of reasons, I have sort of lost interest in the craft.  However, there is the occasional baby quilt to make and that is what I have been working on the last month or so.  Since I have been learning the English Paper Piecing technique I decided to use that approach to this project.  Now, granted, this project was just squares and the EPP technique was more work that it needed to be but I really did enjoy the accuracy of it and am glad I did it.  Also, I decided to machine quilt the project instead of hand quilting because it is meant to be used and washed and I just thought it would be stronger.  Ok, that sounded good but the real reason was that this was meant to be a baby quilt and not a kindergarten nap map and I wanted to get it done in a reasonable period of time.  If time had not been a concern, I would have hand quilted it to keep it all consistent.

The new baby is a boy and his mom is doing his room in gray, white and turquoise with touches of red so I chose fabrics with those colors.  I also learned something from the Hubs.  As I was connecting the larger sections, I was having a hard time holding everything together to insure the accuracy so he came to my rescue with tiny binder clips.  They worked beautifully and, yes, he isn't getting them back. 

I also did the binding differently than I had ever done before.  I usually bind each side individually and tuck the ends in and secure. This time I was determined to use a continuous binding and I was thrilled that it worked so well.  I will probably do this sort of binding from now on.

So, here are a few of the photos from the project -- I wish I had taken better ones but you will get the idea of how it went.  I was very pleased with the entire project.

I used a paper cutter to cut my paper squares for the English Paper Piecing

Fabric from designer Aneela Hoey -- yes, they are straight pins but I look at them as just a geometic with lots of color

Binder Clips to hold things together

Continuous binding

Nice design on the back from the straight line quilting

Finished product

So, what do you think?