Thursday, August 13, 2026

A Finish and I Quilted This!

Hi and welcome 😊 I hope you're enjoying (or tolerating) the August weather. Thanks for dropping by. Today I have a finished baby quilt. It's been in the works for a while and I finally stopped agonizing about the binding and just got it done!  

Orange Scrappy Baby Quilt Finished


The quilt is made of scraps that I got from my DIL's mother. She made a lovely quilt for her granddaughter but didn't want the scraps (can you believe that? 😲)  I was quite happy to oblige - there were some nice big pieces in there, enough for another baby quilt. You've seen me make it and FMQ quilt it and now it's done.

Finished and washed - Orange Scrappy Baby Quilt

I made some very simple blocks, mostly the wonky snowball variety. My first post about this quilt was from July 2025, so it took a little longer than a year. Way to go me!😍
 
Glamour shot with the phlox

It was nice this week so I took some glamour pictures in my backyard. You can see some of the good parts of the yard 😁. 

The very yellow scrappy backing of the quilt 

The quilt in my favourite part of the yard

As I mentioned above, I've been thinking about the binding for this quilt since I finished FMQ it in April of this year. Should I got with a yellow or another colour? I didn't have enough scraps from the quilt for a scrappy binding and the yellow backing is just too bright. Finally I decided on a brown and found the perfect one in my stash. It was the brown/orangish porcupine in the fabric that decided it. Let's face it, the binding needs to match something - so a cute porcupine will do.

Note - technical details that can be skipped! 
Since I was in a learning mood (patient and curious), I decided to push myself to do a good machine binding. I've done them before but they weren't very good, so this was a learning moment. I used a 2¼" side binding (I'm adding this for my records.) I realised that I believed that the binding needed to be flush with the quilt fabric underneath it, with no extra space inside the binding. That's why the back of my binding was always wider than the front and couldn't be neatly stitched by machine. I'm not sure how clear this is, but I ended up lining the back of the binding just beyond the original front stitch line. This mostly worked. I did fix a few spots where I missed the edge of the binding but it was much better than I usually do.

Binding needs to slightly cover the stitch line

The corners are not always easy to stitch, so when re-stitching it, I used a glue stick to keep the corner in place to stitch it. It worked wonderfully!

Gluing down the corner to stitch it well

What I learned
  • When in doubt about the colour of the fabric to use for the binding, match an element of the quilt - it should work.
  • Taking the time to think about how I was putting on the binding and what was going wrong helped me get better at sewing the binding by machine. It was time well spent. Hopefully I'll be able to practice and get better!
  • The tip to myself for future machine bindings is to take my time and concentrate on each step.
  • I'm hoping to spend some quality time in my studio this weekend and finishing the Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt. Then I'll be able to practice on another binding 😀
Related links
Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. You may want to check some out after linking below.


I Quilted This!


Welcome to the I Quilted This! linking party that celebrates quilting on a domestic machine or custom quilting on a long-arm. Feel free to link up and share any recent project, even if you're not quilting it! 

Here are the posts that included FMQ, ruler work and walking foot quilting last week. Thanks for linking up 😊 and consider grabbing the button. 

Terry from Ongoing Projects quilted her Stars and Stripes Guild Challenge. She shared pictures of the quilting, but we'll have to wait until October for the reveal! 

Terry using a combination of thread to
quilt straight and curved lines

Terry quilting straight lines on her Stars and Stripes

Diann of Little Penguin Quilts finished this sweet Christmas in July table topper. Here it is. You'll want to go and read the post for more details.

Gail of Quilting Gail made a test quilt based on Brenda's new pattern Tilt-a-Whirl. You'll see Brenda's quilt below. Gail made her quilt in low volume colours. Gail used Silly Moon rulers Turkey and Charming to quilt it.

Gail's test version of Brenda's new quilt pattern, Tilt-a-whirl

Details of Gail's quilting of Tilt-a-whirl

Vicki from Vicki's Crafts and Quilting quilted and finished two quilts! The first is a pineapple quilt with large stippling while the other was made using a jelly roll and quilted with large freehand feathers. Check out these two beauties!

Vicki's pineapple quilt with large stipling

Vicki's jelly roll quilt with freehand feathers

Brenda of Songbird Designs has a new pattern out for a new fabric collection. The quilt pattern is Tilt-a-whirl which you saw earlier.

Tilt-a-whirl by Brenda

Brenda also made this great Funky Tulip runner which she quilted using FMQ and rulers. Brenda used the new fabric line. You may want to check out her post for more details.

Brenda's Funky Tulip runner

It's now your turn 😍

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

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