Fat Quarter Quilt- Part 2

I did it. I finally finished Harper's quilt. Woohoo. This is by far the biggest project I have tackled to date. I really think that I spent way more time thinking about what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it than I did actually sewing.

It was a cold, dreary weekend so I had several uninterrupted hours on Saturday morning to knock it out. I can't tell you how happy I am to have this finished. It is far from perfect, but I am still proud of it.

I took photos so that I could share the process with you.

I decided to just stitch in the ditch, so it doesn't have a very quilted look to it. I was too afraid to do much more than this, maybe next time.

Then I trimmed the excess material.

Here it is all trimmed and ready for the binding.

I used the leftover fat quarters and scraps from the quilt to make my binding. I determined that 10 22 inch strips and 10 18 inch strips would make the binding long enough with some excess to work with. I made the strips 2.25 inches wide. If I had it to do over again I would do 2.5 inches though.

I sewed the strips together alternating 18 inch and 22 inch pieces. I also tried to distribute the colors evenly. Then I laid it out on the quilt to make sure it fit all the way around and also to get an idea of where to start attaching it.

Then I ironed the seams open.

Then ironed it in half.

Here is my lovely pile of binding.

I decided to attach the binding to the back and then bring it around to the front and topstitch it. I just could not imagine hand stitching the binding on and I knew that I would be able to make the topstitching neater on the front.

So I lined up the raw edges and stitched the binding on all the way around mitering at the corners.

Then I flipped the quilt over and brought the folded edge to the front and topstiched all the way around again.

Ta-da. All finished. I know I broke about every quilting rule, but I am ok with that.

I used some of my scraps to make this pillow to match the quilt. I almost used every bit of the fabric. Gotta love that!!

In case you missed it, here is Fat Quarter Quilt Part 1.