tensley's doll quilt

I apologize in advance for the lengthy blog entry.... Lots of little details about this project that I want to be able to refer back to in the future...

I finished this doll quilt for my daughter, Tensley, the beginning of this week.  I previously blogged about this little quilt here & and here.

I used a really skinny binding.  I wanted to try doing a narrow binding since this is a small doll quilt.  I cut my strips to 2", which ends up being 3/8" on each side of the quilt.  It was a bit difficult to hold the binding down while stitching and I didn't pin the binding down - I don't know why, maybe for an additional challenge.  The mitered corners were a bit tricky, but overall I think it looks pretty good.  (By the way, I 100% machine stitch my bindings.  First I attach the binding to the back of the quilt, then I wrap it around to the front and machine stitch the binding to the front of the quilt.  I set my needle so it is just a few thread widths away from the edge of the binding.  Someday I hope to be able to attach my binding like this, but that may be a ways off.  I don't have anything against hand stitching, I just don't know how to do it and I like that I can bind a quilt in such a short time a nap time.) 

The backing fabric is leftover from Tensley's curtains and crib skirt.  I did all over stipple quilting with my free motion foot.  I practiced beforehand and the hopping motion really annoyed me.  Somehow I came across this blog post, where Leah explains how to modify your free motion foot so it doesn't hop and so it is an open toe foot.  With help from my dad (thanks dad!), we made the modifications and I tested it out on some practice quilt sandwiches.  It works so much better with the modifications.  I can see what I am doing and no annoying hopping motion!  I need to keep working on my stippling as I would like to be able to make it look more random and more wavy.  Oh yeah - and remember I had tension issues the last time we talked?  Well, I found a solution to that as well.  I forgot to put my feed dogs down when I practiced this time & guess what!?  No tension issues!  I also found on Leah's blog that she does not lower her feed dogs when she free motion quilts!

Don't you just love the peach carpet in our rental house? Yeah, me neither.

It was nice to use up the remaining scraps from Ava's quilt and now Tensley can use this to cover up her babies instead of the dish towels that she has been using. 

Thanks for reading,
-V