Done!

I am officially done with my first quilt! I finished last night and am extremely happy with my finished product. It is far from award winning quality, corners don't match up exactly and I'm sure a few other things are poor but I love my quilt!


I started the process last August when I started cutting out squares with a square cardboard template, yes, cardboard. I simply used an old cereal box. Those of you who have quilted realize this is the wrong technique but it worked well enough. Then I started cutting the pieces out with a scissors, once again not the best method but I didn't have a rotary cutter or cutting board yet so I used what I had. 


In September I purchased my sewing machine so that I could start putting my pieces together as I had already determined that hand quilting the pieces together would be way too much work. My pieces went together fairly easily and then my machine malfunctioned, well I thought it did but this set me back about a month because I wasn't able to connect with my neighbor lady to diagnose the problem. The day after Thanksgiving she helped me out so that I was able to put the board around the blocks. 


Finally, in February I got together with W (my neighbor) and she helped me put on the batting and backing after which point I started the hand quilting. I don't know if I will ever hand quilt again but I am glad I did this time despite the immense amount of time required. My stars look pretty wonderful and I'm glad that in some ways I put my quilt together in a very historical method all the way from cardboard template, to scissors and then hand quilting. 


About two weeks ago W once again helped me out by teaching me how to put the binding on and yesterday she walked me through the final step of the binding. Hand stitching the binding last night took much longer than I thought it would but it wasn't nearly as time consuming as my stars. So after many hours at least 70 maybe more I am done, enjoy!