Final Steps

The camera lies, reading the dark pink fabric as orange. I was able to fix it somewhat.

With the quilting finally wrapped up, it's time to cut some binding strips and trim off the excess batting and backing from around the quilt. Past experience has shown me that especially when using cotton batting that will shrink, it's always a good idea to wet down the quilt before doing that trimming and adding a binding. I just liberally sprayed the entire quilt with water and let it dry overnight. As expected, there was some shrinkage - a quarter inch one direction and a half an inch in the other. This quilt is around 40 x 49 inches so you can imagine there would be substantial loss in length and width on a full size quilt, another thing I learned to take into account in my early years of quilting. 

The fabric I chose for the binding is not used anywhere else in the quilt but pretty much matches the darkest pink fabric in the top. I absolutely love the way it framed the quilt and brings it all together. My camera however seems confused about it and in trying to fix it with my photo software, I can make it less orange but then the green becomes more blue. So bear with the differences from photo to photo. This is why I like to attach fabric swatches to my documentation files.

Here's a detail shot of the quilting and binding. The greens are pretty true but the dark pink too dark and too reddish orange.

As I did on the quilts made for this baby's siblings, I found a few spots to quilt in his name. Here the pinks are more true but the teal greens have gone a bit blue.

And here's a shot of the back. I'm pretty pleased with the way this turned out, although it did remind me that I'm not that fond of overall quilting designs. With my start in traditional quilts and studying antique quilts, I've always been drawn to use the quilting to highlight or enhance the design of the quilt, be it pieced or appliqued. Back in those early days of learning and before machine quilting was widely accepted, overall quilting patterns tended to be derisively referred to as "mattress pad quilting" as they were often just repetitive pantographs barely more complicated than the quilting on a mattress pad. All that has changed, I think mostly because of the advent of the longarm machine where it is much easier to quilt designs side to side across the top than to do any stitching in the ditch. And the overall designs that are being quilted by these longarm quilters are anything but mattress pad quilting, beautiful in their own right.

Still, I ponder how I could have quilted this differently, especially in a way that would have emphasized those lozenges. The other baby quilts were also based on strips and long narrow rectangles, and they all got stitching in the ditch with quilt motifs added between the lines. However, I knew that kind of quilting would take more time and I just didn't have it in me. The overall designs of hearts and leaves was quite fun to do - certainly not done perfectly but adequate for the project - and hold the layers together such that this quilt should be able to take the wear and even abuse a quilt for a little one will get.

So yeah, from start to finish I was able to let go a bit while making this quilt, trying new things, new combinations, using up fabric languishing in the stash too long, enjoying different parts of the process, because there wasn't the same sort of pressure I feel when I work on an art quilt. Let's hear it for baby quilts that don't require perfection, although we always strive to do our best!