I finally finished my first quilt!

Ta da!! I finally finished my first quilt. I started this quilt in May with a class I took at a local quilt shop. I zipped along on the quilt top, I even got the back and borders put together pretty quick. Yep, I was thinking this quilting thing was no big deal. I had a local longarm quilter do the quilting for me. I chose a teal thread which blended nicely on the front and contrasted really neat on the solid brown back. It was looking lovely and going so smoothly and then came the last step... hand sew on the binding. WHAT?! Hand sew?!

Really, hand sew on the binding. This quilt is big (well, only twin size but that seemed big to me thinking about hand sewing on the binding)! I didn't really pay much attention to binding "talk" before this little step popped up on the instructions... How come more quilters aren't complaining about hand sewing this thing on at the end? *Sigh*... So I set off on hand sewing the binding on in late June. I would work on little bits of it here and there and it was so SLOW going. In late August I was still working on whipstitching this binding on (yep, I said whip stitching *shudder*), then along came this smart new gal at work who let me in on a little secret - YOU DON'T WHIPSTITCH THE BINDING. Oh man!! I'd already gotten half way around this twin size quilt, diligently whipstitching along when I could find time (have I mentioned I sometimes have up to 5 kids running around the house and I work full-time?). ACK! What was I thinking?? I'd seen quilt backs and hand sewn binding, and now come to think of it they never looked whipstitched.

I just thought those other quilters were better and stitching than me (which they probably are) but they were actually just using the right technique *sigh*. Well, I decided to just start doing it the right way "blindstitching" the rest of the way around. I guess it makes my first quilt a little more special with the learning mistakes making it uniquely mine.

 In other news... I need to convert these bottles into my world famous, fancy "birthday label" bottles. Stay tuned for before and after pics.

AND!!! Look at this sweet new program I just purchased. Corel Painter Essentials 4. It's like painting on the computer. I'm super excited to learn all of the bells and whistles and hopefully master it soon for my 2011 Christmas Card.
Thanks for stopping by to read my rambling blog post.