#1. Make a Quilt

I've mentioned this project before, but now that Christmas has passed, I can finally tell you that I completed it. Hallelujah! It was not an easy task, but still a lot of fun. I learned a lot and do not think it will be my last quilt.

All along, the quilt was intended for my newest niece, Lucy. She is my sister's fourth child and she arrived in November. My sister did a lot of sewing for my baby's nursery since I lacked the time and skills. So this project was the least I could do to say, "thanks."

I forgot to take photos of the finished product (doh!), but luckily my sister took a few for me. Here is Lucy showing it off.

Here it is!   

I got my inspiration from Cluck Cluck Sew.  I did three sizes of rectangles/squares and arranged them randomly.  For the quilting I just picked some rectangles that were equally spaced throughout the quilt  and stitched in the ditch around the perimeter of each rectangle.  The binding was probably the most frustrating part.  I just used the backing fabric and wanted to machine sew it down.  I thought it would be a breeze.  I was wrong.  The machine (or rather I) kept pulling it funny so it was just a mess.  I only got about half way down one side when I decided it wasn't worth it.  I ended up hand stitching it, which didn't take as long as I thought it might.  I'm glad I did it that way.  It looked just the way I wanted it to.  I'm not even sure if I would attempt to machine sew a binding in the future, but we'll see.  Hooray for finishing my first quilt that I did every cut and stitch on!