My First Quilt Tutorial

I have gotten into sewing over the years, and although my fabric stash comes no where near my aunt Debbie's, it's getting up there.  I buy stuff with no real purpose in mind, if it's on sale, or just too cute to pass up.  I also have a few bought for stuff I know i want to do. 

I was in a purse/bag kick for awhile, and although I love me a new purse, I was getting tired of doing them.  And after tackling an Amy Butler pattern for diaper bag, on my own (aka, no help from Jen) I realized I could do more than just bags.

Jen made Jacob a gorgous quilt for my baby shower.  This girl put time into it.  And it was her first quilt.  That girl has talent.  I realized that I will need to up my game when they decide to have a baby, and so I should start working on that now. 

I made a quilt for my soon to be born niece.  The first on the Posey side.  I actually did it without a pattern, although I'm sure that is obvious.  It is like a playskool, my first ______, except quilt version.
It was fun picking out the fabric, all girly and baby.  I actually had made Bailey a purse for her birthday a few years back, and had some leftover fabric from that, which i was able to incorporate into her baby girl's quilt.  Like Momma like baby right?

I had the baby word fabric from Jen, which was from Jacob's quilt, so Baby Girl Posey gets something from her momma and her cousin.  The other fabrics, purple dot, owl, pink side, was actually from Target and was for receiving blankets.  The backing was the minky pink from JoAnn's that is just so soft.

I started by cutting all the fabric, by far the most time intensive part I think.  The width was the the length of the receiving blankets, and then i did 3.5 inches for the width of each strip.  I cut 15 strips, 4 of the purple dot, 4 of the pink, 3 of the purse fabric, 2 brown baby, and 2 owl.

Start cutting away

 After pinning the pieces, I started sewing.  1/4 inch seam, matching right sides together.  I wanted the quilt to be wider than receiving blankets, so I stitched together all except the 4 pink pieces, in the following order:
Purple, Purse, Baby, Owl, Purple, Purse, Purple, Owl, Baby, Purse, Purple
You can view pics farther down to see a visual.

Starting the block sewing

 First 3 strips done!

 Here is the finished strip sewing, also a visual for those who want to see the pattern.

 Next, I attached the pink strips to the outside where I wanted them.  They meet in the middle since I was using the length of the recieving blanket for this.  Even though a seam in the middle, it works out well, and adds texture.

I then stitched the oustide pink strips to the quilt, again matching right sides together and 1/4" seam

 Next, came the batting.  I went a bit overboard on the batting, because this was My First Quilt, and it didn't seem "fluffy" enough to me, so I did two layers.  You only need one....

I cut to the size of the quilt and pinned it down to the wrong side of the quilt.

 At this time, I also cut the oh so soft pink minky fabric for the backing.  I pinned this to the other side of the batting, so it looked like a quilt (almost) at this point. 

After pinning the batting and the backing to the front of the quilt, I stitched a 1/2" seam around the entire quilt.  Don't worry about the edges, that's what the binding is for!
Sorry for the blurry edged picture...

 After, I added the premade binding (in white).  It took two packages, bought from JoAnn's. I pinned, and then stitched as close to the inside quilt edge of the binding in matching thread.

All DONE!!

 Here is a view with the backside also.

 I opted to not stitch across the quilt.  I had debated on it, but due to timing, it just wasn't going to work with the shower coming up.

Can't wait to meet Baby Girl, who is due to arrive next week!!