Emily's Quilt Finished!

I finished this quilt a couple of weeks ago but, being a Christmas present for a gorgeous little girl, had to wait until I'd given it until I could share it.  So here it is: Emily's Quilt!

I wanted this to be a definitely girly quilt, but not too pink and fluffy.  The recipient is only fifteen months old, so who knows what colours she will like!  The ladies at my local fabric shop, Coles, were very helpful (and patient!) pulling bolts of fabric out to help me find the right background fabric to go with the selection of fat quarters I'd pulled from the racks.  In the end I went for a dashwood studios cream polkadot fabric for the background, which brought the mixture of accent fabrics together well.

My plan was to keep the design for this quilt fairly simple.  I used six patterned fat quarters, and 1.5m of the cream polkadot background fabric, cutting them into 6.5 inch squares (to be 6 inches finished), and laying them out alternately in a 9x11 grid.

For five of the squares towards the bottom left, I replaced the simple square blocks with Emily's name.  This was my first attempt at piecing letters - I spent a long while figuring out how to do it, and I'm so pleased with the result.  It's now inspired me to try making a whole alphabet quilt, I just need to find the right fabric...

I pieced the backing from some big flowery fabric from my stash (I love it!), and quilted it with orange peel quilting in the same way I quilted my wall hanging.  I finished it off by binding in a deep purple fabric.  The finished quilt is around 54" x 66", a nice size for snuggling.

Linking up to Crazymomquilts, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Around the House 3 - Wall Hanging

Continuing my roam around the house...

I always wondered how much use pre-cuts (charm packs, jelly rolls etc) actually were, and what you could really make with that little stack of squares or strips.  Finally I decided that the only way to find out was to have a go, so I bought two charm packs - a PB & J by Basic Grey for Moda one, and a wren and friends by Gina Martin for Moda one.  I turned the pb&j one into an awesome wall hanging, and the wren and friends one has become a series of cushions (I'll write about those in another post).

I put the charm squares together in fours, and then arranged them on point alternating with squares of a creamy coloured cotton (nothing special, just the standard plain cotton from my local shop).  I quilted it using an orange peel pattern following this tutorial over at petitdesignco.  I'm not very well practised with free motion quilting, so loved this method of doing the orange peel quilting as I could use a walking foot.  It's really simple to do, but so effective.

I also quilted in the ditch along the edges of the large squares - that's visible from the back but you can't really see it from the front.  It's backed in the same creamy cotton as I used for the background on the front, and I bought some extra yardage of one of the charm square fabrics for the binding.

I'd always intended this to be a wall hanging, so during construction I added a couple of pockets to the top corners so that it would be easy to hang using a bamboo cane.

This was a fun project as it was contained quite a few firsts for me:

• my first charm square project
• my first time doing orange peel quilting
• my first time doing this folded binding, following Amanda Jean's tutorial over at crazymomquilts- I have done it ever since as it gives a lovely narrow binding and a neat finish 
• my first time doing a quilt on point

It was great trying out so many new techniques, and I was so pleased with the outcome.  It's now hanging on our study wall, to brighten up my day when I'm working :)