Baby Quilt Bonanza - Part 2

The quilt is complete and off to Australia. The machine sewn binding worked decently, though I will need more practice as I still cannot sew in a straight line. All in all I am pretty happy with the end result and thrilled that I finished it in time to send it with my father-in-law instead of having to pay to ship it.
Here are some shots of the process I wasn't able to load before:

And here is the finished product:

Sorry the colours are a bit off from the afternoon sun coming in that day.
Here are some shots of the binding grey thread on front & blue on the back:

So, onto the next baby quilt. Luckily I have a longer time frame for this one so I'm going to tackle a tougher pattern I think. I'll try to post progress photos as I go.

Baby Quilt Bonanza - Part 1

After a marathon of sewing the quilt for my sister in-law is finished. I've quilted it, did the binding, and washed it to make sure there are no dyes left in it, or loose threads. Phew.

I must say that my husband was a trooper for taking care of the pets, and feeding me on Friday while I sewed all day - last day of vacation. So now the package is ready to be delivered to Melbourne in the coming weeks when my father-in-law goes back home after a whirlwind visit.

The front pre-binding. I used this pattern because I think it looks like stacks of books, and my brother and sister in-law have so many books at their house, or did when I visited in 2009. Perhaps some have gone to make room for the upcoming bubs, who knows. I think I'm going to call it 'Red Riding Hood' as that was my inspiration for the colours, and say 'to the bookworm to be' since I don't know what her name will be.

For the back I used selvedge to selvedge strips of the fabrics from the front. I think that make it more useful as a baby quilt to be totally reversible. I did straight-ish line quilting so it would look good on the top, but I don't think it looks too bad on the back. The one pre-planned aspect I did get right was to have these stripes facing the opposite to the 'books' on the front so there were seams lying on top of seams. For the spacing I just eyed the front of the quilt to try to make the lines look good against the 'books'. All in all I'm pretty happy with the results being this is my 2nd completed quilting project.

I will get some photos of the binding and the washed completed project up soon. I copied a technique I saw on an antique quilt in Perth where they had zigzag sewed the binding on. It looked so wonky & adorable I knew I had to try it. I won't lie - the binding did not go well as far as it being super equal all the way around. I cannot sew in a straight line to save my life. Hence all of the 'wonky' quilt patterns I like. I think more of the problem came from my squaring up not really being square, but who wants a cookie cutter quilt - right? This one has heaps of personality. Or so I keep telling myself.

Here is one of Crosby at the end of the day of sewing. One tired little guy.