2011 Thing a Week 13 - Simple Baby Quilt

I love this.

As I said before, I got the idea to make this quilt from this post. I don't know who/what this quilt will be for, but I wanted to make a small quilt to see if I even enjoyed the process. I did, and already have fabric to make a few more.

I used way too many quilting safety pins but that's a bit of my OCD perfectionism coming out. Hopefully next time I can relax it a bit. I pinned and sewed the first color in one evening, and I would have gotten the second color in if I had noticed that the tension was off. I had gotten a third of the way through the blanket with the blue thread before I realized it was wrong and had to pull it out. I finished sewing the quilt the second day, trimmed it, and set up the binding. Sewing the binding took 2 days. Four days for a quilt!

Trimming the edges.

The binding was just an inch or two too short, so I had to add a bit more after I'd sewn most of it. And then I sewed them together the wrong way, so that the seam and the raw edges would have been on the outside of the fabric. Hopefully I can remember how to do it correctly if it happens again!

It was supposed to overlap a few inches, not a centimeter.

Machine stitching the front edge.

I used this to attach the binding and this to hand sew the other side of the binding. I should have spread out the hand sewing part. I just kept going and sewed it in two evenings but it was hard on my hands. I sprained my pinky a few years ago and there's some pain every once in a while. It hasn't hurt in months and it definitely hurts after sewing through a few episodes of Bones. For the next quilt I should only hand sew about an hour at a time.

I'm hoping to use leftovers from these smaller quilts to make a large one to use as a picnic blanket and for trips to the park. I'm not sure how a larger quilt will fit in my sewing machine. Any tips?

Also, my walking foot is so loud I wear earplugs. Lames.