Ella's Quilt is Completed!

Yesterday I finished the binding on Ella's quilt, and I had the pleasure of delivering it to Carla this morning. Here's an overall shot, and a close up of the bottom right corner (click for larger view):




To recap the process...
Carla and I got together to flip through quilt magazines for inspiration. She wanted to find a pattern that would allow us to use large squares of the fabric from Ella's nursery print, yet have a traditional scrappy feel to it. After playing with various layouts in my EQ program, we settled on our design. Carla did most of the fabric shopping, I only supplemented a little from my stash. I used the dress print to the fullest extent, squeezing out just enough for a 1.5" border around the quilt. Since we ended up using bigger pieces of the blue fabric on the front, we didn't have enough to do the 3" border. When I returned to Jo-Anns to purchase more, they were out! We settled on the purple fabric as a second choice, and I really like it. To quilt it, I stitched-in-the-ditch along the grid lines and then quilted across the diagonals of the blocks. This is the first quilt that I have used one long continuous strip of binding and attempted mitered corners. It's also the first quilt that I have sewing the binding on completely by machine (attached to back first, and then used a blanket stitch to sew it down on the top). I was pleased with the results.

Next up -- a t-shirt quilt. I don't know how quickly I'll start to tackle that one, but I'll keep you posted! :)