Finished Churn Dash Baby Quilt

Ta-da!

 Last night I finished up the last few stitches in the binding for this lovely little quilt! And that means my January Lovely Year of Finishes goal is completed too! Hooray!

After many, MANY hours of free motion quilting, this one is ready to go off to its new home.

As I might have mentioned previously, this quilt is for a college friend of my husband's and his wife for their first baby due in March. 

When I finished it my husband asked me if we could keep it or if I could make one exactly the same for him. I told him that I can make him one that's his own size rather than baby sized.

Stats:
Size: 48 inches square
Blocks used: Churn dash
Backing: Giant churn dash with borders
Fabrics: all from my stash -- a mishmash of matching fabrics.
For: Baby K due in March!

Linking up with Finish it up Friday and at A Lovely Year Of Finishes!

Churn Dash FMQ Progress

Despite (or maybe causing) the lull around here the last few days, I've made serious progress on free motion quilting my churn dash baby quilt.

Here's a progress shot:

I made the mistake of starting out quilting this one a little on the dense side for 1. my first larger FMQ project and 2. a baby quilt. I would probably be done before now had I not started making such miniature meanders. 

Right now the center four blocks are done and the outer blocks are in various stages of being done. Here's a closer up shot of the two edge blocks that are finished and then a closer up view of the block on the left.

I've learned a lot very quickly in the span of starting this:

• Tension! I have a scrap fabric/batting/fabric sandwich that I have been testing my tension on before each time I restart stitching or if I switch bobbins. I had to take out a big ol' section because of the MASSIVE UGLY LOOPS on the back side. I just about cried.
• Thread breaks from the spool thread. How do you prevent these from happening? I figured out how to cover them up slightly but they make me sad!
• I'm very thankful that my machine has a needle up/needle down option. Hallelujah!
• At first, it was hard for me to quilt in the very light areas with the white thread. I got more used to it, but I understand why contrasting thread is often used!
• I'm proud to say there are ZERO puckers/folds on the back thus far. After I got the center blocks quilted, I laid it out on the floor and readjusted all of my pins. The backing might not be perfectly centered anymore, but I definitely would rather have zero back puckers.
• It didn't take me long to find a good quilting groove. There are still lots of imperfect places, but I'm really happy with everything thus far.

Hopefully I can finish up the quilting and get the binding on this weekend! (Edit: this is finished! See it here!

Happy Thursday to you!

Sharing at The Freemotion Quilting Project's Friday Link Up!

Churning It Out.

In a matter of less than 24 hours, I managed to get all of the blocks done for the quilt top for my churn dash baby quilt! And that includes trimming all of my HSTs. While that part took a lot more time, I think it was totally worth it because none of my HSTs ended up wonky (which was a huge problem in my Lazy Sunday Mystery quilt.)

Here's the top all put together:

I'm so happy with how this turned out!

For the back, I thought that I had enough of one fabric to complete the entire back, but I sadly did not. Instead, I took a walk on the wild side and made this for the backing:

Yes. That is a 42 inch churn dash, people. I used up the majority of what was left of all of these fabrics and the biggest churn dash that I could make and still have some of the tan dot print for outer borders was 42 inches finished. The outer strips are 5 inches wide -- so the backing is about 2 inches bigger than the top all the way around.

Here it is all layered and pinned -- ready to be quilted!

It's so liberating to not have to buy fabric to finish a project and to pull every bit of fabric used from my shelves! I did have to buy white thread to be able to free motion quilt this one on my own. Yes. I am going to FMQ this thing myself.

That's one of my quilting resolutions this year -- to learn to FMQ and to finish more of my own projects myself and to have 100% completed by me. I still have no problem having a long arm quilter doing my big projects or special projects, but things like baby quilts I can totally learn to handle on my own. Anyone with me on this??

Sharing at Linky Tuesday at Free Motion by the River!

ALYoF January Goal

I'm finally back participating in 2014's edition of A Lovely Year of Finishes!

This month I am working on a baby quilt for college friends of myself and my husband. Since we don't know if they are having a boy or a girl, I picked this group of fabrics to make a churn dash quilt.

I didn't have much of the brown chandelier print left, so I went a head and used up that fabric first. I plan to make this one 4 blocks by 4 blocks without a border. Here are the ones that I have finished thus far!

If you haven't linked up your January goal yet, there's still time to do so! Also, Honey, Bunny, and Doll Patterns is now a sponsor of A Lovely Year Of Finishes -- so every month one winner will be receiving two of our patterns!