My first quilt {ever} is DONE!

Ok, if I remember correctly, we left off at the point where I had sewn together the entire front of the quilt, but hadn't done anything else.  Well, this past week I got my rear in gear, picked up some 50% off 100% cotton batting from Joann, & quilted that bad boy on my little Brother sewing machine.  Had the quilt been an inch longer I'm pretty sure my machine wouldn't have been capable of getting the middle of the quilt done...I pushed that little guy to the max!

Here it is almost done & laid out on the dining room table.  Eli keeps asking me when it'll be finished & we can finally put the sewing machine away...I keep telling him that I need a craft room.

Chaz is my "art cat".  He always finds himself in the middle of my projects...usually with paint on his paws or tail.  Since there was no paint involved in this one, he thought he'd take a quick nap on the quilt AS I was sewing it.  Every time I slid him out of the way he'd sneak his way back up & plop his 18+ pounds in front of me.  Silly cat.

Ok, so here's what it looked like after the "quilting" portion was done & I had trimmed the batting & extra backing off.  I had planned on using & had actually bought some fabric for the back, but ended up finding an old sheet from college that worked perfectly without any seams...sign me up for easy any day!

That was where I was at on Monday night.  The last step was binding the edges of the quilt.  I'm not a huge fan of square corners, so I traced out a curve using a lid & cut off the excess fabric. If I were to do it over, I'd probably do square corners after all...it was TOUGH (impossible?) to get the binding to look nice around the round corners.

I had originally planned on doing a yellow/gold binding, but after looking at all of the pre-packaged binding at Joann I just couldn't find a yellow that was "right" & I wasn't going to attempt to make my own.  Sooo...I settled on a moody gray-blue. I especially love the binding with the stripes on the back!

After pinning & sewing a quick straight stitch all the way around (another thing that if I were to do it over I'd have sewn closer to the inside edge of the binding - you live you learn), I ended up with this finished product!  Perfect for snuggling on the couch on the chilly winter nights to come!

I love the subtle chevron stitching on the back...

I'm pretty darn proud of myself!  :)