stroller blanket part 2, revenge of the batting

After the first cheater blanket with fleece backing and serged edges, I turned this one into the real deal with a top, batting, backing, and hand-stitched binding!  I managed to cut, piece, baste (using basting aerosol spray) and quilt a second stroller blanket all in one morning and afternoon!

The binding is on it now and I’m saving it to hand stitch it to the backing (red with white polka dots–same as Ellie’s minnie skirt) the night before we leave.

(I’ve been getting a bunch of questions about quilting on Edna, and so here’s the skinny on this straightline quilting effort–I quilted it on the Singer 15-91 with the normal foot (I don’t have a walking foot for her yet). I didn’t have any trouble and didn’t really miss the IDF that my pfaff has (the ‘integrated dual feed’–basically a built in walking foot).  I think the puckering you see in the lower left was due to basting issues more so than quilting problems.  (It was my first time with the glue basting method, and I wasn’t as careful as I could have been.)

I didn’t mark my lines (since I desperately trying to finish it before picking up Will from school).  If you look for it, you’ll definitely find some wavering, but I’m not worried about it.  To me, that’s like ‘eyelash counting’ on a big print.  You CAN be like that, but most people won’t!  I found a little trick that seemed to be the most successful for me–if I put my right thumb over the next point that I was aiming toward, as I guided the quilt, it was easy to steer that point right into the needle.  The quilting design really came to me on a whim as I was walking the quilt over to the machine and I’m excited about the energy it adds!