My first quilt finished!!

Phew! I did it! Finished a whole quilt!

I enjoyed the whole project - learning as I went along.

I started with a bag of scraps:

Which were all sorts of funny shapes and sizes, so mixed with colour scraps I had, I cut squares and strips..

 and gradually pieced together enough to make a single bed sized cover:

I don't own a rotary cutter, and although I read a lot of quilting advice and blogs that said how important it was to cut accurately, I stayed with my trusty scissors.

I am not a perfectionist and much prefer to focus on being able to do something successfully than perfectly (if that makes sense) - a successful quilt to me is one that looks nice, covers the bed and keeps the occupant warm!

I did lots of shuffling around of the pieces until I liked the overall look, then stitched them together.

Only a few fish ended up swimming upside down!! oopps!

The batting layer for the inside was made with all my scraps of fleece pieced together!

Then the backing was made from a large roll of mustard coloured knit fabric I was given recently!

Now things were getting tricky!

I've never sewn anything the size of this before.

Some quilting blogs I read suggested tacking together the layers to stop them slipping when you quilt them. 

I'm too lazy to do that, so went with the safety pin option.

One blog I read, the lady said she'd used 500 safety pins to secure her quilt!! Unbelievable!

I raided my stash and found about 30!

So placed and pinned them at intervals, smoothing the fabric as much as I could!

Then it was time to quilt the 3 layers together!

Oh my! Trying to maneouver all that through my little machine was tricky!

Oh - and I had to test out first that I had my threads right - with blue on top and yellow on bottom to match the colours on the quilt!

I think overall it went pretty well - only a couple of puckers on the bottom:

And a couple of bits of dodgy stitching on the top:

So now all I had to do was the binding!

So I found another yellow scrap piece and cut this into strips:

I joined the strips together, then ironed the long strip in half..

Then opened it out and folded the edges into the middle crease and ironed again to make my own binding!

Then I was very lazy. (again! gosh that seems to happen a lot!)

I got my quilt, binding and machine and stitched it all together as I unrolled the binding strip!

Yes I did end up with a couple of small 'missed' bits..

Which I had to re-stitch to secure.

But hey - I finished a whole quilt!

And in spite of the small flaws and imperfections, I'm proud of it!

Here's the front...

and here's the back..

And my daughter loves it on her bed - now the other daughter wants one too!

And here's one last picture of my quilt on a fence - because it seems to be that you have to photo your quilt on a fence! That's what all the quilters do!! and now - maybe I can call myself a quilter..?? maybe?

I take my hat off to all you quilters out there who have the patience and the skill to make perfect and beautiful quilts!

I love browsing around blogs to look at them in awe!

But to those of you who have never quilted, I say give it a go!

It was a challenge - and yes I will be making another one, which may or may not have fewer flaws and imperfections.  But it's handmade with love, and hopefully these quilts will be ones that my daughters will keep for years - and hold happy memories of growing up alongside the Great Barrier Reef!