Haley's Quilt

This is a bit of a back posting, as all started almost a year ago when my niece Haley was born. Our family was all extremely excited by her arrival and that we finally found out it was a girl.

My head (along with everybody elses) went into Pink over drive and I decided I wanted to make her a quilt. Id never made a quilt before.... but what a better inspiration, than a newborn niece??

Id had in my mind a simple design quilt with pinks, greens and chocolatey browns - to match their dark grain cot. So I set about cutting and piecing 4 x 9inch (I think) squares into patches and tramming with a tea coloured check. (I didnt take photos of the piecing process)

I had finished the majority of the top of the quilt one trip home and then planned the two side borders to make the quilt wider. And I purchased the backing and border fabrics.

For the next trip home to Sydney, I had finalised the quilt top and went to buy batting. I found this GORGEOUS all cotton batting on sale in Spotlight - I'll have to remember what its called.

So the next step was to pin it all together....and here's where I have some pics.

And then machine quilt. I used Mum's Bernina Aurora machine to quilt and it was a blast. She showed me some fabulous tips like:-

- anchoring the thread by making small small stiches at approx 0.6 length

- bring the bobbin thread up to the top of the quilt before you start stitching
It was all "in the ditch" quilting and to see it all come together and start to look like a finished project was fabulous.

After machine quilting was complete, I decided to bind it in the backing fabric, a coffee coloured gingham, and then the hand stitching.

Finished quilt...

I was very happy with the end result, and I hope little Haley loves it too. I still need to label it.

Even though this was the first quilt I started, it was actually the second one I finished.