Sam's Quilt

Well, you have already seen glimpses of the finished product (here) but I thought I'd give you a little more detail on Sam's quilt.
I started this quilt in September during the Pinterest Challenge. Here I found the instructions to make a quilt top, and I completed it! Yay!

But after completing the quilt top... I hemmed and hawed and spent a long time trying to decide what to back it with. After much deliberation I decided on a fabric-- the same fabric I covered the changing pad with. I went back to the store to purchase more... and they didn't have it anymore. AUGH! I searched for something else for a few more weeks, and couldn't find anything else I liked as well, so I broke down and ordered the fabric online.

Sooo... This quilt is 'crib size' which turns out is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. When I went to put the back on I all of a sudden realized there would have to be a seam... ugh. I didn't want a seam down the back. I didn't know how to match up the pattern... ugh. So I came up with this solution... I had a bunch of scraps that had been trimmed off the blocks that made the front. I pieced together a strip of irregularly shaped black and white blocks and used that accross the "seam" on the back side. Yay. Crisis averted.
Next I laid it all out and pinned the layers together. (I used an organic cotton quilt batting, already cut to crib size) Then it was time to start quilting. After some deliberation on that subject I decided to just 'stitch in the ditch' along the chevrons with white thread.

...and it took forever. As I have found quilting usually does. sigh. At first I was all... oh, yay, I'm making a quilt for my baby, isn't this lovely and stress releiving. Then it got down to those last weeks before the baby came and I was all I'm ready to be done with this. ALLLLLL of this.  But I DID complete the quilting before Sam got here.

All that was left to be done was to trim the edges and bind the quilt. Which really should not have taken as long as it did to accomplish. But I was indecisive again... and couldn't decide upon a binding fabric (pattern or no? Do I use a solid color? Something already used in the quilt? Just black?) Soooo... I kept putting it off and then!
I had a baby.
So I am just going to point out that it would be a few weeks before I would care about a quilt again. Mmm... okay.
It actually took me four weeks to get back to it after Sam was born. And I bought some green fabric to bind the quilt and got it all home and started it, and decided I didn't like it. SIGH.  So I ran to The Lob one night late while my husband was watching the boy... and bought some black fabric. I gritted my teeth and said URRGH! This must get done!
I used this tutorial to create my binding. I sewed the strips on the back side first...

Then flipped it and sewed down the front with my machine... if I were hardcore I would have hand finished my binding... but I was not that hardcore at this point. Either that, or I don't love my son that much. Yeah, one of those two.

Anywho... I finished it!

 And I love the way it turned out. I presented it to Samuel when he was four weeks old. He snuggled and studied it, and cooed his approval. Which made mama feel good. (Yes, my self esteem is wrapped up in my infant's approval. Don't judge me.)



(Those of you super observant might notice that we got a new fence between quilt top and quilt completion. Don't you like our new fence? It's pretty! Also... the snow you see on the ground there is the total amount of snow we have had so far this season. We were pretty much snowed in for days. It was dramatic.)

See... the new quilt is just a great place to stretch out and take an afternoon nap... mmmm... nap time. (Don't you just love those chubby baby legs? Ahhh! I could just eat him up!)