the finished quilt

This quilt has been in the works since Christmas but owing to uni work, revision etc, it wasn't until this summer that I really made it a priority to work on it.

There is something so special about going into a project knowing it will be a gift. Handmade is so precious. It is magical to think you are making something unique.

To make this quilt I used a jelly roll from Moda. These are strips of fabric that are designed to coordinate with one another. They are pre cut into 2.5" strips which is fab for those of us who are lazy cutters, (not that I am one of them, ahem.)

I tried a few new things with this quilt. First up was machine quilting it together. For this I used my darning foot on my machine. Rather than feeding the fabric through the machine, the darning foot just sends the needle up and down in the fabric so that you are free to move it as you will. A bit like drawing yet you are moving the paper rather than the pencil.

To keep it simple I just moved the fabric in big swirled patterns. I love the texture it gives.

I also tried a strip piecing ( I think that is the term) technique to patchwork the top. This really speeded up the process and made the quilt look far more detailed and time consuming than it was!
Strip piecing is super simple:

Grab as many strips as you want in your row. Here I have demonstrated with five. Sew these together where I have marked the dotted lines. Press the seams.

Now cut these strips horizontally like so. Keep repeating this process with different combinations of fabric.

Now join these horizontal strips together again to make the square.

I am so pleased with how the quilt turned out. It is pretty large but all the more room for snuggling! 

One of my favourite parts of quilting is finishing off with the binding. I chose a very pale pink stripe because, a. it certainly didn't need any more bright colours and b. you can't go wrong with a stripe.

A finished quilt. All packaged up and delivered to a special friend. I have to admit I was sorry to see it go but her face when she opened the package was just the best!

Homemade. It can't be beaten.