I haven’t posted much about the Spring Flowers quilt, but it’s now pieced, quilted, and bound.  I had a date with the quilt tonight to finish the binding, and I had success!  It’s such a great feeling to finish the binding!  I still have to bury all the threads, then label it, then wash it, and then I can send it to its new home.

The colors in this quilt certainly remind me of spring, and I can’t wait for the new mama to open up this quilt for her baby girl!

When I finish this quilt up I’ll post about the changes I made to the pattern.

My next project is a baby quilt for my cousin’s first baby.  She’s having a girl and is due Feb. 11.  I’m so excited to work on a baby quilt!  I’ve been working on such big quilts lately that it’s going to be nice to work with one that is relatively small…quick to piece, quick to quilt, and quick to finish.  Baby quilts are so satisfying!

One of my favorite fabric lines is Butterfly Fling by Me & My Sisters Design for Moda.  This is the line I made my very first quilt (other than the wall hanging I made in my beginning quilting class).  This fabric is so fun and cute and it’s not babyish.

The pattern is Baby Mine by Camille Roskelley.  This pattern is a great deal because you get 2 patterns…one for a girl quilt and one for a boy quilt.

I’ve had the quilting done for the Urban Nature quilt for some time now.  The next step was binding.  Admittedly I was a nervous to do the binding mostly because at 95 x 95 working on the outer 1/4 inch of the quilt all the way around really made me nervous.  Today I decided to take the plunge.  And it really wasn’t all that bad.  Dare I say no more challenging than the 60 x 70 quilts I’ve done.

I’ve noticed lately that if the presser foot pressure is the same as it is when you sew or piece the top when you are trying to sew the binding it creates too much pressure causing the binding fabric to shift in ways you don’t necessary want.  (I realize I didn’t explain that well, but I’m not sure how else to explain it).  So I decided to experiment with the presser foot pressure, and I found that if I decrease the pressure just a bit the binding sews on beautifully.  For example with regular sewing on my machine the presser foot pressure is set to 6.  When I free motion quilt I set the presser to 2, and with the binding I set the dial between 4 and 5.  Anyway, I’ve never heard of decreasing the presser foot pressure for binding, but for me it made a big difference.

7 1/2 hours and 25 filled bobbins later (that is not a typo…it took 25 bobbins to finish this quilt!!!), I finished quilting the Rocqua Rhythm quilt.  As I mentioned here, my stippling is getting tighter, and it keeps getting tighter.  I certainly need to figure out a way to go bigger with my quilting.  I hope I can prove the lady in my local quilt shop wrong when she said “once you go small you can never go back.”

Even though it took me a very long time to quilt, I do love how it turned out.

Anyway, now it’s on to the binding.  I now have the binding attached to the front, and now I need to hand stitch the binding to the back.  I haven’t had a whole lot of motivation to do this (perhaps because it took so long to quilt), but hopefully I can get the binding done soon, because I absolutely love this quilt!

I finished hand sewing the binding for the Merry & Bright quilt!  **yeah!!!**

Now that this quilt is done (except for the label) I can move on to other projects.  I have more quilt tops completed than I’m willing to admit (there are more than I have listed to the right under quilts in progress…not sure if that’s a or a ), so my goal is to get some of those quilt tops quilted and finished.  Instead of starting new projects I’m going to finish some of those quilts in progress…that’s the goal anyway.

I really do get the itch to be creative, and since I’ve been doing pieced backs, that will satisfy the creative itch…I hope anyway! 😉

Ethan had his first day of Kindergarten yesterday!!!!  Since we have to be out the door 90 minutes earlier than we did for preschool, I’m finding I too need to go to bed earlier.  And since most of my quilting happens in the evenings after the kiddos are in bed, my earlier bedtime means less time to quilt.  Bummer, but hopefully I’ll adjust and still work in some good quilting.

In the meantime I’ve been hand sewing the binding to the back of the Merry & Bright quilt.

Last night I made the binding for the Merry & Bright quilt.  The fabric is from the same line, and I just love the stripes, as they are on the bias, so I get the effect of bias stripes without having to cut on the bias.  I don’t mind cutting on the bias, but if I don’t have to all the better!

Today I put the walking foot on my machine and sewed the binding to the front of the quilt.  Now on to the time consuming task of hand sewing the binding to the back of the quilt.  But I think that will have to be another day, because there is some good tv on tonight (Burn Notice and Royal Pains).  I usually watch tv that doesn’t need my full attention while I sew the binding on…so perhaps tomorrow.