My First Quilt and entry to Blogger's Quilt Festival

I finished My First Quilt just in time to enter it into Bloggers' Quilt Festival hosted by Amy from Amy's Creative Side.

This is the first quilt I ever pieced, although not the first quilt I every finished, making it my oldest UFO. Yay! My first UFO finish of 2011! I took a Beginner's Quilting class from Quiltique, an awesome LQS in Henderson, NV. I bought a kit from the store with all the fabrics already picked. There is a beautiful Asian theme going on, the real-life colors are red, gold, and black. The pattern is (loosely followed) by Alex Anderson. I made extra blocks and added sashing and cornerstones. It finished at about 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide. It will be perfect for car rides. It can cover my feet and legs without bunching around my waist.

I quilted it on my Bernina. I used Suns and Rays, which is basically radiating lines coming from a circle. I traced all kinds of circles from household objects: a small plate, a pot lid, a tupperware container, to get different sizes. I used a walking-foot but some of the lines are a little drunk. I used gold metallic thread on top and a variagated brown/yellow on the bottom. I should have just used regular brown though, since the thread blends so well into the back.

Today was binding day. I went to Joanns Fabrics to find some binding and forgot to take my quilt with me. Argh! I found a pretty red, small print floral that would be okay and got in line to cut. There were 20 numbers ahead of me, and groceries sitting in my car. I decided to look at their Fat Quarter selection instead. I found the PERFECT binding: red (the perfect red) with gold flowers. This fabric was made for this quilt!

I made the binding, then attached it. I was going to hand-sew the back, but I just got too excited! Instead, I attached it by machine. My first time trying that technique. I love it! I left lots of room to improve, of course!

Kitty-tested, Kitty approved!

I finally finished it just before bed. Now it's past my bedtime and no time to wash it, so that will have to wait. Right now I'm just enjoying sitting under it while I type my post. BTW, this is the first quilt I've made that I get to keep! Yay for me!