My First Quilt

Hello Blogland!  I've sure missed you!  This week I am enjoying time off of school.  When our district put together our calendar this year, they added a week at the end of February for make-up snow day in case we needed them.  Thankfully, we've only had 1 snow day, so school was in session on Monday, and it's out the remainder of the week.  PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW!  This week couldn't have come at a better time!

I figured I could get caught up on a million and one projects I've done and have wanted to share with you!  The first one is a quilt I made this past summer...my very first quilt!  It definitely won't be my last!!!  A dear friend emailed me and asked me if I'd be willing to make a quilt for her little man.  I had always wanted to try my hand at quilting (especially because one of my besties is a master quilter), but never had a good reason to.  Thankfully this dear friend is also a very flexible person and was so easy to please!  I used a variation of different ideas, mainly following this idea of a quilt without a binding.  The main blog that I went to for sewing (and emotional) support was Diary of a Quilter - using her quilting tutorial.  Let me tell you, if you can sew a straight line, then you can make a quilt.  It's as simple as that!

First things first, the fabric had to be chosen.  She wanted something brightly colored that was gender neutral so it could be used for her little man and then again if some little ladies were in her future.  She settled for "Half Moon Modern" by Moda.  A charm pack (42 5" squares) was purchased:

Unlike the quilt without a binding tutorial, she did want a fabric border on the front of the quilt around the squares, and so we settled upon the grey small dots from the "Half Moon Modern" collection:

For the back, she chose the larger grey dots to compliment the front:

The other supplies needed was batting to go on the inside of the quilt, and coordinating thread - I just used a white thread.  For the batting, I purchased "warm and natural cotton batting - crib size" from Joanns.  After all the fabric was in and the batting was purchased, I was ready to get started.  

Please forgive my picture quality...I used my phone and I have none taken with a real camera...

The first step was to figure out the pattern/sequence of the charm squares.  With the help of my sister and mom, I finally decided upon this:

The key here was to make sure that none of the small dot grey was on the outside because I didn't want it to blend in with the border I was going to put around it. 

Once I settled upon the sequence, I made rows by placing the squares right sides together and sewing a 1/4" seam.  Once all my rows were made, I pieced them together one by one and connected them.  After all the squares had been pieced together, I used Diary of a Quilter's quick method for adding borders.  I pieced them together with the sewn together squares, and voila!  I had what was looking an awful lot like a quilt!

I was now ready to sew my batting to the back of this piece.  I cut my batting the size of this piece of fabric and then safety-pinned the pants off it!  After safety pinning it, I chose 3 vertical seams and "stitched in the ditch" (sewed along these seams) to attach this front piece to the batting.  Once the batting was in place, I cut the piece of my back fabric the same size as the front piece:

Now I was ready to get jiggy wit it (na na na na na na na).  I pinned the back piece of fabric to the front piece of fabric right sides facing each other.  I then proceeded to stitch all the way around the edges of the 2 pieces a little less than 1/4" in. I left a small opening so that I could turn the fabric pieces right side out, and then I stitched the opening close by stitching all the way around the edges of the right side turned pieces.  Once I was finished with that, it was time to "quilt" the pieces.  You can get all fancy with this step, but I stuck to the basics.  I decided to "stitch in the ditch" throughout the entire quilt.  Here's what the 'beaut looked like when I was done:

The front

The back

I don't think I've ever been as proud of a finished sewing product as I was of this project.  I was smiling from ear to ear and was all over the internet looking for my next charm pack to make my new quilt!  Unfortunately I haven't made another one since this one, but I definitely look forward to trying my hand at it again, something REALLY soon!  What about you?  Have you every quilted?  If not, what's holding you back???