My First "Real" Quilt

Wow it has been quite a while since I've been on my blog.  I have had a lot of things going on in my personal life, but today for the first time in a long time I felt like myself!  And since I was feeling good, I thought I'd show off this awesome little quilt that I made. (I know not very humble, but I'm really excited about it!)

One of my good friends at work & his wife recently had a sweet little baby girl to add to their family of boys.  I decided to use the tutorial over at Diary of a Quilter to make her a quilt.  This was my first "real" quilt, I've only made rag quilts before.  I wanted it to be girly (but not too much so, as she will be in a home of brothers).  But I wanted to make something with pinks and reds and blues, because I've been seeing that color scheme lately & wanted to get in on that.

When I found A Walk in the Woods from Moda, I knew that was perfect!

The tutorial was really easy to follow.  Here are some pics of my progress along the way.

Piecing together the squares

Adding the borders

Ready to be Quilted

I apologize for the blurry picture of the end quilt, but I was a little late (baby was week overdue) and I wanted to get it quilted before she arrived.  I searched online for long-arm quilters in my town & emailed two of them to see if they could sneak me in.  And luckily for me, one of the ladies actually lives right in my neighborhood!  She is two streets over & you can actually see her house from our back yard!  Plus she is super nice and was able to help me out & quilted it with little swirls and hearts.  It turned out more beautiful than I could have ever expected.  And my friend and his wife LOVED it.  And baby does too.  They even took it with them to have her newborn pictures taken.