I've made my first quilt (almost)

A while ago I was given some old fabrics (curtains, bedsheets and a dress!) from my mother-in-law, so I started making a quilt! As I began, I thought "this is easier than I thought it would be", but then I got to the actual quilting bit and the unpicking began! I've had to simplify my design to match my skills, but as a first attempt I'm pretty happy with it. Here's the process in pictures:

The benefit of using second hand fabric is that I didn't need to wash it to pre-shrink it (yes, I just hung it on the washing line to get a nice photo!).

First I had to decide on a pattern for the quilt, so I drew up some options but here's the one I settled on.

I then drew a square template to cut my pieces from...

...and cut out all my squares.

I then had to sew them all together - at this point I was getting a bit full of myself as I managed to do it fairly quickly.

Next I decided to sew a border on:

...and then it got tricky. I decided to go for a fairly complicated free hand quilt pattern, but quickly realised I'd been way too ambitious as the quilt started to pucker and the bulk of it got wedged in the sewing machine! So I spent a few days unpicking the bits I'd done and then I just quilted along the lines between the squares instead.

So it's almost done - I just need to sew the bias binding round the edge of the whole thing! The back is a bit of a mess, but I've learnt from my mistakes and will do things slightly differently next time. I've already bought the fabric for my next project - a Christmas table runner:

And now for something a little different - we bought Natalie a nice wooly hat because we're going to the Lake District next week, it looks very cute! She's been wearing it on our bedtime walks (which normally end with her falling asleep!)