Pieced, quilted, bound, FINISHED!

Here it is - my very first full sized bed quilt finished. Complete. All stitched up.

This quilt was my very first adventure into patchwork. I started in December 2009, just 10 months after picking up a needle and thread for the very first time, and piecing the top was a huge learning curve. I posted my first progress report here on 29 December 2009 - and wrote about learning this amazing new technique called chain piecing :-). By 28 February 2010 I had completed the quilt top (posted here), but it wasn't until May that I had it basted with backing and batting.  Then began the slow process of hand quilting, which I finally finished in January.  A few more weeks and I had selected the perfect binding fabric and got this sewn on, and ta-da here it is!  Just less than a year after completing the quilt top, the whole quilt is finished.  In the meantime, I have completed several other smaller quilt projects but, as I said, this is my very first patchwork and my very first bed quilt and so it holds a special place in my heart.  I am as proud of this as just about anything else I have ever done (child-rearing aside!!)

Here I am at 11.15pm last night sewing the last few stitches of binding to the back of the quilt:



And then a few minutes later, checking it over:



Before wrapping myself in it :-) :



Hmmm, and looking rather boss eyed.  Well I had been stitching the damned binding for at least 3 hours!!

Today, I took the quilt over to my  mum's to show her and take more photos and couldn't resist sharing this one of Waif, who insisted on being in the photos:



I'm lucky to have two boys who are such fans of my quilts :-)