This is my first quilt finish of the year and I'm hoping to set a precedent of making quilts that I'm really proud of and love. I made this quilt for my dear friend's new baby boy.


It features cute embroidered panels from the book S is for Stitch, though the tree is from Doodle Stitching: The Motif Collection and the jelly and pineapple were my own little doodles.


The embroidery was stitched on the absolutely gorgeous Lakehouse dots in white on white, such a great fabric to have in your stash. I made the embroidery into blocks using a Summer Kona Roll Up, I had enough from one roll to make all the blocks, borders and binding and I still have the yellows, oranges and pinks left over. That little roll goes a long way!
The backing fabric is Taffy in Indigo, Prince Charming by Tula Pink and it ties in perfectly with the Kona shades.

All pieced with my trusty Aurifil and straight line machine quilted with Aurifil 50 wt 1128 - a perfect medium shade of blue. I also hand quilted each block in white perle thread:


I embroidered a label (the photo is cropped to protect the identity of the baby in case anyone wants to steal the quilt) and used a simple running stitch to attach it to the back:


This completes another project from my FAL list.

Here's a quick border tutorial...

Once I had the blocks arranged I realised I would need to make the quilt wider and the left over roll up strips were the perfect answer. I pieced them into long enough strips and was about to sew them to the quilt top when it occurred to me that it would be much quicker to 'quilt as you go'. 

You need to baste the quilt with the backing and wadding wider than the quilt top, and also pin the area that doesn't have the top on it - basically just pin the backing to the wadding so it stays put when adding the borders. This picture was taken after I'd sewn the right hand border but you can see how I made extra space on the left:

these pictures were taken as I was sewing,
please obviously make sure your quilt is nice and flat when basting!

Then pin the first strip to the quilt top, right sides together:


and sew it using a 1/4" seam allowance:


Then flip the border over and press (I finger pressed but go ahead and use an iron if you want to). Pin the next strip to the first border strip, right sides together:


Sew it down, flip and press again and then repeat with the final strip:


And there you have it, a simple way to add a border. You can quilt on top of it if you chose to. I left it as it was but if the strips were wider than 2.5" (the width of roll ups and jelly rolls) then I would have quilted the border to give the fabric on top more stability. 


The scrappy binding used up the rest of the leftovers and is the perfect frame.


The quilt measures approx 40" x 56" so there's plenty of growing room for the little one and hopefully as he gets bigger he will enjoy all the little pictures. Thankfully his mum and dad love it!