Straight Line Quilting

This 3 day weekend was devoted to making a baby quilt.  I used my scraps for the quilt top and binding and bought some bright pink Kona cotton for the backing.  I used the straight line quilting technique, so on this 45" square quilt I ended up with 143 lines!  It was a little over whelming after a while.  I listened to A LOT of songs on my I Pod and took several breaks but I was determined to meet my goal before the Bachelorette started Monday night!  I cut all my scraps three inches wide and then at different lengths.  For the white I used a white bed sheet.  The next time I do this type of quilt I will definitely spend the money to buy some white Kona cotton because the sheeting fabric was too thin.

After I got the quilt top made I used my living room floor to sandwich it together.  I like to use the pad under the carpet to secure my safety pins in to hold the quilt backing in place and then I pin the quilt about every 4 to 5 inches.....

Before I started quilting, I was trimming loose threads and accidentally cut into the quilt top.  I had to patch the hole before I could start quilting............

This picture shows that I almost have those 143 rows of straight line quilting completed! I started in the middle and used a seam as my guideline and from that point on I moved the quilt to the left and used the edge of the sewing foot as my guide.  This made my rows be approximately 1/4" apart.
It was not easy to keep it all in line, so there are some rows that are very close together for when I had to get myself back on track............

Here's the back of the quilt showing the pretty pinkness and the fabric scraps I used for the binding.  I cut the binding 2.5 inches wide, ironed it in half and sewed it raw edge to raw edge on the back side first and used the blanket stitch to secure it to the front.

Here's how the quilt looks after putting it through the washer and dryer.  I love how the tiny rows all puckered up....

Here's how my patched hole turned out.  Hopefully it won't be as noticeable to others as it is to me!

All folded and looking pretty......

Folded the opposite way to show the bright pink backing and the striped binding.....

Again, next time I do a quilt with a lot of white in the quilt top I will use a thicker fabric to avoid the seams "popping" through the top!  I'm not liking these showing at all.  I trimmed threads before I sandwiched it together but I still ended up with some loose threads showing through the quilt top too.  Lesson learned the hard way!

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