It's finally finished - the first quilt I ever started!

The herringbone quilt for my friend Wendy is complete - at about four months after her birthday that it was intended for and just in time for warm weather, whoops, but she absolutely loved it and that's really all that matters.

I hand sewed the final edge on the binding for this quilt, which was a first for me. I do like the effect better than machine sewing even if it is time consuming. Many episodes of Poirot were watched in the final stretch of binding.

I ended up only using the green thread and quilting a simple quarter inch grid to keep the fabric center stage, and used a cute mint and white polka dot sheet I found at Target for the backing.

I surprised Wendy with the quilt during a picnic with friends at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. If you are ever in NYC I recommend visiting; the gardens are breathtaking, particularly the Japanese koi pond and shrine. They have a cherry blossom festival every year as well.

Unfortunately I've been playing violin so many hours that I've caused myself some wrist and arm strain, so I'm taking it easy for a few days! I've had some therapeutic taping done to help reduce muscle strain and pain that is making it feel a lot better and they were nice enough to color coordinate it with my outfit:

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday, TGIFF, Link A Finish Friday and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'm joining in A Lovely Year of Finishes to try and get some of my WIP quilts finished. This chevron quilt was intended for a friend's birthday in January and it's now very late, so my April goal is to finish this quilt.

I'm also going to extend ALYoF since I started late - I still want to get 12 projects completed between now and the end of 2015. To that end, I'm going to get the simpler blocks finished for a Dallas Stars hockey quilt I'm making for a friend. All of the single patch and four patch blocks should be finished by the end of April, leaving me with just the stars and the paper pieced blocks to do in May.

Linking up with ALYoF.

Towards the end of 2014, I decided that I was going to do something very ambitious and get back into sewing by making a quilt from scratch for the first time. I hadn't sewn at all since I was twelve or thirteen and begging my grandmother to help me make a cosplay costume for a convention, and back then I hadn't been responsible for anything beyond stitching the edge of the skirt so I could feel like I was 'helping.' 

I devoured quilting blogs, wasted away many an hour browsing online fabric shops, and finally ordered a bunch of charm packs and got to cutting and laying them out for weeks.

This is not that quilt.

Mainly because when I said 'ambitious,' I meant 'I started out queen sized and now I can't figure out how to baste the thing in a tiny NYC apartment.'

(sad trombone noises)

I'm planning to test out the tabletop basting I've read about, but in the mean time, I decided to make a small throw quilt for a friend to practice maneuvering something smaller through the sewing machine.

The cat is very fond of the birds and had to be locked in the bedroom so I could baste it.

This quilt uses Amy Smart's Fast Four-Patch Quilt Tutorial and makes a quick baby quilt or throw. It was easy even for me with my complete lack of experience to put together, and I would definitely recommend it to another beginning quilter or someone who wants to let the fabrics take center stage - the large blocks finish at 8in, so it's a good way to show off larger scale prints. 

I used a variety of different bird prints in the large squares and a fat quarter bundle of Cotton + Steel basics in Splash that coordinated nicely for the four-patches. I also pieced a bird and hand-embroidered a label out of scraps for the back. It was quilted with simple straight line quilting, and while I need more practice to avoid puckering, I'm very proud of this as a first effort!

This quilt is now being packed up and shipped off as a surprise to a friend who's had a rough year - hopefully it will cheer him up a bit!

I'm looking forward to continuing to make more quilts, including finishing up my queen-sized monstrosity and making a surprise quilt for my grandparents who are moving into assisted living this spring.

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday, Link A Finish Friday and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop.