My First Quilt (from start to finish)

Last year I began my first quilt that I was going to make from start to finish and make like a regular quilt. I selected a Stacked Coin Quilt pattern and used Moda's Giddy charms packs. I made my quilt top slightly larger than the pattern and used an off white fabric with it.

Once the top was completed I made the quilt sandwich with batting and backing. At times like this having a large tile floor is very useful.

The quilt is pinned so that it can be quilted.

Quilting is the scary part that I had never done before. This quilt was to be my practice. Everything I read said to just do it and thats how you will learn. In my previous quilting I always used the technique of layering the quilt, sewing the edges and turning it right side out then sewing in the ditch (along the lines of the quilt). Free motion quilting uses a darning foot and basically you move the quilt to control the stitch length and pattern.  It took awhile to get the technique down and get the settings on my machine right. However once I did it only took me a few hours to do this stipple type pattern on the quilt.

Here is a look at the back. I put and extra strip of stacked coins on the back as well. I was pretty happy with how the quilting came out.

Next I trimmed the excess batting and fabric from the quilt and squared it up.

Binding is something else I have never done before. The fabric for the binding is cut into 2 1/2 inch strips and sewn into a continuous strip. The strip is folded and ironed in half. This strip is then pinned to the border of the  quilt.

The binding is then sewn on using the walking foot all the way around the quilt. Then the binding is hand sewn to the back of the quilt. I finished the binding today and planned to take some nice lighted pictures outside but was too excited. Here is the completed quilt.

A closer look at the finished binding.

I also washed it so that it would get that nice crinkly quilt look.

Yeah! I finished my first quilt.