My First Quilt

I did it! I made a quilt! I am so very proud of myself. You have no idea! I found this really awesome tutorial that helped me through the whole process.

Nate's little sister is pregnant. She's due on my birthday, February 20th. We are really excited to welcome this little guy in to the family. I wanted to make her something really special so for some reason (I blame Pinterest) I decided on a quilt. I have had most of the fabric for a while, but I had to special order the giraffe fabric and then I was waiting on Christmas to see if I got a rotary cutter, and I did. So off to cutting quilt squares I went. These are 5" inch squares (actually 5 1/2 for seam allowance).

Here is a basic (unfinished) quilt. I think it is absolutely adorable! I love the colors and am pretty proud of myself for getting the colors together so well. I was so excited through this whole process.

First, I cut out all the pieces and laid them out how I wanted them. That is the point where I got really excited because I thought it was going to be so pretty. I think that was my motivation to just go with it.

I sewed all the strips together, again following that tutorial on how to iron the seams and pieces to make them fit right.

I even had an adorable helper to keep it from hitting the ground. Actually, he just wanted to help so this seemed like a good way he could help and me not get all perfectionist, freak out mom on him.

So, here is the top before the actual "quilting."

I machine quilted it, just with big "X"s. I tried to do it by hand, but I got overwhelmed when I had no idea what I was doing, so I just used my machine. I used invisible thread because I couldn't decide on a color that would be OK to cover the cute little giraffes with. I had a moment where the back got a little gathered and I almost freaked out. Fortunately, Nate was there and I was able to talk myself off the "I can't do this" ledge.

I found another way to do a super easy binding. I tried to keep it simple since it was my first quilt. I actually just used the backing, because I wanted a brown edge. I don't know if that's the right thing to do or not, but it worked. I measured about an 1 1/2" out from the edge and then folded it over twice. Then I used the invisible thread around the edge.

Here was the final! I finished it Friday. It did not take nearly as long as I thought it would! She already has her cute bedding but I thought she could use my quilt for tummy time or something else.
I'm so proud of this and totally feel like I can do it again. In fact, now I want to make a quilt for Brixton's bed (I want to re-do his whole room, but that's another post).

I had lots of spare fabric, so I whipped up a couple of cute, matching burp cloths. Her nursery is blue and brown with giraffes (in case you can't tell).

Of course my bobin ran our of thread when I was this close to being done!

Sunday she had her first shower. I had decided if I finished in time I would give it to her at the shower. I had told her a long time ago I wanted to make her something, and she had helped me pick out the giraffe fabric, but the rest was all a surprise.

And she loved the burp rags, too.

And here we are together. The picture is a little blurry, but you can see how big it actually is.

Here's another link to that awesome tutorial. If you have ever wanted to make a quilt I highly recommend this. It has every detail you are going to need and is so easily laid out.