A quick finish.

I have been reading Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project, getting some great guidance and inspiration as I gear up to try some FMQ stippling on my niece's quilt.  After doing some practice stippling on quilt sandwiches for the past week or so (see below), I felt ready to try it on a real quilt- then I chickened out a bit.

Well, it was one part chicken out and one part inspiration.  I thought that since the quilt got a bit out of hand, size-wise (52x64), giving her a really baby sized quilt as well might be nice.  Since I already had some big whirlygigs I made for this project (14.5 x 14.5), I decided to put those together with 1 inch sashing and borders to make a 32 x 32 baby quilt.

I also included two little pockets on the corners so it can be hung on the wall.  Hopefully this will get used a lot, and not displayed, but I wanted to try doing it (it was easy) for future quilts.  

The best part about this project is that it went together FAST!  The 4 blocks were already done, so I just had to sash, border, sandwich, quilt and bind, which to no time at all!  Also, I got to do a practice run of stippling on a real project!  It is obviously beginner's work, but I am really happy with how it turned out.  As you can see, I did a random stipple, and learned yet another valuable lesson: lighter color thread is better, especially if you don't want to draw attention to your quilting.  I am going to use a light green on the big quilt, so hopefully it won't detract from the patchwork as much as the lavender did on this one.

For binding, I used some of the "Greatest Show on Earth" pink bubbles fabric, and did a machine binding, which is fast, but I still prefer the finished look of the hand-stitched binding.  For the back I chose a purple and pink flower print.  Didn't piece the back, so that made things go much faster, too.

I also love how small it wraps up!  I think it looks like a folded up newspaper...remember what those looked like? :)  My sis isn't expecting 1 quilt, so 2 quilts should really be a surprise!  Hope she likes them!  OK, enough typing- I need to start quilting the big baby quilt!