BINDING

I started making a quilt for Mason before he was born.  Now, as he is approaching 15 months old, I am nearing the final stages.  I've made yards upon yards of double-fold seam binding.  I swear, I think I made ten yards of this stuff, which is a little bit of overkill considering my quilt is baby sized.  I guess I have plenty now to use for a future project. Or several.
I have to say, I love it when quilts are bound in something unexpected, which is why I generally make my own.  This print isn't actually found anywhere in my quilt, but because of all of the different blues and greens, I think it works nicely.  I hope to share pictures of the finished product in the near future.
I am no expert on making this stuff (by far!), but I generally watch this video in order to help me think through the whole process.  This helped me as well when it came to sewing the stuff and I know this site is really helpful as well.

Pieces

A project that has been in the works for awhile now is a quilt for my sweet baby.  In the six short weeks of motherhood I've experienced, I have learned that quilts are a very valuable tool to have in my toolkit.  When I lay the quilt on the floor for Mason to lay on, they stop spit up from making its way through to the rug, as opposed to blankets, which just soak through.  Of course being a spit up catcher is not the only reason I love quilts.  I also love them just because.  And I wanted to make one for my boy so he had something made with love from his mama.

I chose the color palette from stash fabrics and settled on blues and greens with some linen fabric added in to balance it out.  I wanted the pattern to be simple, but I knew I wanted to follow an actual pattern rather than just making a random quilt like last time.  After sketching out a few ideas, I decided on a simple brick pattern.
I cut my pieces 6.5 in x 3 in, which was somewhat based on research and somewhat on a whim.  Ultimately, I don't think it really matters what size the pieces are for this quilt as long as I liked them and they were uniform.
So after I cut and cut and cut and cut and cut, I finally have all my pieces cut and am ready to start piecing the top.  As long as I can find the time for it while juggling caring for a newborn, this step should go pretty quickly, and it is also probably the most gratifying too (next to finishing) because the pattern really starts to come alive.  I can't wait!

Because these fabrics were mostly chosen from my stash, I love the stories that are connected to each piece.  Several of these came from my grandmother's stash, are leftovers from projects I have done in the past, or even projects that never were.  My favorite story in this quilt, though, is that one of the fabrics (unfortunately it isn't pictured in any of the photos) came from one of Mason's grandpa's shirts!  I just think that is such a fun part of this.  When Mason is older, I can tell him all about what went into this quilt.