Monday, September 16, 2013

Baby Quilt for Penny

Where has the time gone? I started quite a few projects this summer but only managed to finish three: table runners for a friend of a friend (they were just basic burlap rectangles so I didn't take any pictures), a baby quilt, and some quilted potholders for our awesome friends who let us crash with them in Burlington last weekend (which I just realized I didn't take any pictures of, whoops!). Otherwise I was busy enjoying the weather and taking trips to Washington DC, the Poconos, and Burlington, Vermont, and Millinocket and Bar Harbor, Maine. We did some crazy hiking during the last trip so I'll share some photos soon!

Baby Penny decided to arrive early (on my 30th birthday!) so she didn't receive her quilt until she was a few weeks old. I actually finished attaching the binding on the train ride down to DC. About halfway through I referenced an online tutorial for attaching binding and realized that I had been attaching binding incorrrectly up until now. The way I found was so much easier and didn't create any puckering! Of course I can't find the tutorial now, but before I was taught to only pick up a few threads of the binding fabric in each stitch. This has always caused my binding to be very puckery and I didn't understand why my binding always looked like crap. The new method has you stitch about a quarter of an inch on the quilt sandwich and then stitch a quarter of an inch on the binding, starting directly above where the quilt sandwich stitch stopped, and so on. This works amazingly and it's quite sad that I went that long without realizing that the method I first learned just wasn't cutting it. So half of the quilt binding looks like crap (in my opinion) and half looks great. Thankfully you can't tell in the pictures and I'm sure I'm the only one who notices in person anyway.

I used the Promenade Quilt pattern by Basic Grey. I think my favorite print is the matryoshka dolls.

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I had a bunch of the small squares left over, so I inserted them in a vertical line on the back.

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I love the other print that I found for the back; it's like a cheater quilt!

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