Seedlings (Quilt)

All of a sudden I've found myself LOVING the most traditional of quilt styles. Squares...lots and lots and lots of little bitty squares.  This is the one done, but beware, there are probably a few more coming your way.  

Don't you just LOVE the backing for this quilt?  I think it's one of my favorite backs yet.  I bought this fabric when we were in Canada last summer and I have no idea what it is called (sorry!).  While there I found the cutest little modern quilt store and I couldn't help but splurge on 4 yards of this knowing exactly where I was planning on using it.

The quilt is called "Seedlings" and is a total copy of one of my favorite quilt bloggers Rachel over at Stitched in Color.  I'm not even creative enough to come up with my own name for the quilt.  I suppose you could say that there wasn't a pattern per-say, so maybe I didn't copy?  Nope, I did, 100%.  I even bought Rachel's curated fabric bundle from  Intrepid Threads.  Sadly this bundle of the perfect greens is no longer available.  The rest of the fabric came from my stash.  You might even recognize the fabric from Abby's photo project.

This quilt is a Christmas present for my sister in law, Erin.  I knew I needed to move her to the top of my list when Ellyn mentioned Erin saying "I hope I don't have to wait until I have a baby to have Sadie make me a quilt".  Well, a combo of that comment and the fact that it was Erin's 30th birthday this year, meant that she was getting something extra special this year!  I actually started the quilt this past summer and finished it on Halloween weekend (hence the fall pictures).  Since it's a Christmas present though, I didn't want to do a final reveal until I'd gifted it in person.

It measures 66 x 58 and for the record, this is the perfect size for a couch quilt.  I was worried it would be a little small (I used EVERY bit of green fabric I had) but I think the size is perfect.  I may have taken a nap or two under it before I gifted it away.  Let's call it quality control.  HA!

A few first for me on this quilt.  I tried straight line quilting.  It went pretty well because my squares were 2.5' finished so I didn't need to mark up the quilt to make straight (ish) lines.  With only 2.5 inches to go between corners you could pretty much eyeball it for straight.  I was a little unhappy with the fabric pull/pucker that I noticed as I quilted though.  My guess is it had to do with the speed at which I quilted.  Since it was straight line, I used my pressure foot and feed dogs and it seemed like I really had problems when I went too fast.  Slow and steady is the motto with quilting...trust me!  At 3-4 months to finish a quilt, nothing happens quickly.  

The second "new" thing I tried was hand binding.   I'd mentioned back in my last quilt post that I was unhappy with my machine binding results and a good friend came to the rescue.  A friend of ours, Christine, also took up quilting this summer (see, I'm not the only 80 year old trapped in a 30 year old's body) and she came over one Saturday afternoon so we could swap techniques and talk quilting.  She showed me a great hand bind stitch that didn't take me 27 years to do and didn't kill my fingers so I tested it out on this quilt.  I really really like the results.  It took me about 8 hours to hand bind this baby.  Yep, 8 hours.  I know, crazy time right?  But, I figure this quilt took me about 100 hours total to finish so really, what's another 8 hours on top of that?

That little pink block of fabric at the bottom is the quilt label.  My placement didn't turn out quite like I expected but I made do with what I had.  Dang it!!  Next time I'll pay more attention while basting.  You guys, seriously, the more time I put into this hobby the better I get at it.  I learn things with each new quilt and I just love the process in general.  I've got these two weeks of Christmas and New Years off and you better believe I'm making some massive headway on some projects!!