Homemade Gift: Pink Twin-Size Bed Quilt Is Done!

I've had this quilt done for about a week now. I just needed to take pictures of it on my daughter's bed while she wasn't looking. She really likes it and wants it for her own (as she does nearly everything I make), but I'm planning to make her a Hello Kitty one out of thrifted sheets I've collected. At least, that's the plan right now. I may change my mind because I really like how this looks in her room, too!




It's so bright and cheery, exactly as I had hoped!



I machine-quilted this one in 12" blocks before joining them. If you can see a closeup of the stitching (which you probably can't), you'd see that what was supposed to be random stippling was anything but random. Everything I do ends up having a pattern to it. That's my personality, I guess. But I'm going to work on that meandering and stippling because they're a lot faster than my regimented loops! :)

I did three different kinds of quilting on this, just to experiment. I used my walking foot to make diagonal squares on the floral. Then I used my darning foot to quilt around the circles (and ultimately connect them) on the polka dot fabric. And of course the third kind was my loopy loops, which turned out to be lines of loops.



And here it is reversed. I used this pattern on the back because it was fun and made it truly reversible. It didn't hurt that I had just enough of this sheet leftover to do it with, either!



I did this with the "quilt as you go" method, joining it with strips. I love this method and will probably be using it mostly for the rest of my quilting. It was so much easier to do the quilting this way, since I didn't have to wrestle with 30"+ in the neck of my sewing machine to do the quilting. The strips really enhanced the look of the quilt, in my opinion.

Thanks to all who encouraged me to go ahead and combine these fabrics. I really like it!

ETA: There are two ways to do "quilt as you go". If you remember to leave 1/2 - 1" around the edges free when you're quilting the squares, you can join them without strips using the tutorial in this post from Quilter's Cache.

If you forget (like me) or just like the look of the sashing, you can use this method from Welsh Quilter. If you want the sashing to be any wider, you'll need to add batting, quilt them separately, and join them as shown in the Quilter's Cache tutorial (the first link). It works when they're this width simply because your seam allowances bulk up the strips so that they're the same thickness as the rest of the quilt.

I hope that helps! If you have more questions, feel free to ask and I'll see if I can answer them.