Sunday, November 22, 2009

My first finished quilt!

I have finally finished the quilt that I began back in April! What took me so long? I was intimidated by attaching the binding.

For my birthday, Hubby had given me the gift of a series of classes at our local JoAnn store. I picked out my fabrics, and through a series of four classes I would have a completed quilt. Right? Sort of...

The first hindrance was that I wasn't learning to machine quilt in this series of classes. It was a quilt class that required hand quilting. If you've ever hand quilted anything then you know that isn't exactly a speedy process. So I hand quilted, as free time permitted me to, from the beginning of May to July. Then the second hindrance came up. I couldn't hook back up with my instructor. She took a long time to return my calls, then would leave a message with one day she was available, I would try to call back on her cell phone but couldn't get her, then call the store to leave a message for her and tell her the ONE day she offered wouldn't work for me. It became a nuisance. I gave up on getting through to her. And figured I would turn to the internet for tutorials.

And I did look online. Over and over watching youtube videos and being a bit scared. And then I found a great, easy to follow tutorial from Dana over at Old Red Barn. I must tell you that I followed her directions and her pictures just as she shared them and it totally took the intimidation of attaching my binding away. I began working on this on Friday evening and by Saturday evening I had finished the hand stitching to the back.

Thank you, Dana!!! A nice and tidy little binding that I owe you some credit for. I appreciate your help sooooo much!


And I must give a bit of credit to my new machine. The Janome Memory Craft 6600 has an amazing dual fabric feed system, and a super wide walking foot, that helps feed the bulky layers of a quilt right through without puckering. I couldn't get over how easy it was to attach the binding to the front of the quilt! I'm even more in love with this machine now!