first quilt

My interest in quilts and quilting has been piqued several times, but a couple of Thanksgivings ago, I went with my mother-in-law to a Black Friday sale at Jo-Ann's. While waiting in line, I picked up a quilting book (or magazine or something) showing how people had taken pictures of stunning colors in nature and turned the concept into a quilt design. The quilts were impressive, to say the least, and those photos have stuck in my brain as something I knew I had to find time to get around to sometime.

So here it is, something like two years later, and I've finally finished my first quilt! I didn't use any "nature inspired" themes - I figured for the first one I should keep it simple. I made a baby quilt for my nephew using just square blocks.  I'm embarrassed to say that I started it when he was born as a "welcome to the world" present, but I didn't finish it until last month, so it was a "happy first birthday" present instead. Here's my nephew with his quilt and various other birthday loot. And a cake-face picture, just because it's cute.

The main reason it took me nearly 12 months to finish this sucker is the binding. For some reason, I felt completely overwhelmed by the idea of binding a quilt. I used a pretty basic binding method (following a tutorial on you tube, mostly) that only shows on one side of the quilt. Next time, I think I'd like to use a thicker binding, and one that's visible on both front and back.  My mom helped me a TON with this quilt - even just hanging out with me while I did the sewing was a huge morale boost - and she let me use her sewing machine.

I do have my grandmother's old sewing machine at my house, but haven't used it because the tension is all out of whack. We discovered my mom's has a similar problem, so now that I've worked through the issue on her machine a few times, I think I'm ready to strike out on my own ;)

While trying to figure out what I was doing (patterns, sizing, binding, etc.) I did come across several blogs with great ideas I'd like to use. I'll post some of them on here too. I'm excited to get my sewing machine set up and choose the fabric for quilt number two! Maybe I can finish the next one in less than a year...if I can find someone to help me with the binding...