The quilt is out of the cupboard again!!

I finally bought some backing fabric for my quilt yesterday. I had been struggling to decide on the backing and had even been to the fabric shop a few times and left empty handed. The front is such an eclectic mix of bright and patterned fabrics that I wanted to go for something quite mellow but not completely plain.

Hhhhmmmmm, this photo makes my lines look quite wonky, don't look too closely! haha

Yesterday I managed to find some very cute cream cotton with tiny tiny white flowers on it. So I got the never-ending quilt back out today and made good progress. I have ummed and ahhhed for a week or so as to which quilting technique I should use. With it being my first quilt, and the fact that it is the size of a queen size duvet (in retrospect a bit ambitious for a 1st attempt!) I was worried that the quilt would be too big to fit through my machine. After speaking to my friends at folksy I decided to quilt in straight lines but avoid stitching "in the ditch" as my seams were a tiny (teeny, tiny) bit wonky! So I went for the double lines, sewing one line a presser foot width away from the seam on each side. This worked well, and although my lines are a tad squiffy (a knock on effect of following my slight wonky seams!!) I love it... it looks like a quilt now!

I did have a bit of trouble trying to haul the sheer weight of the quilt around, and I found that it was so heavy it would pull to the side, making sewing in a straight line very tricky! I experimented with propping the material on chairs, and pinning the rolled up fabric so it wouldn't slip. However the thing I found worked the best was having the rolled up quilt over my shoulder... however this technique should come with a WARNING.... I nearly re-pierced my ear with a stray pin!! I also spent most of the day buried beneath reams of quilt, sadly I was home alone so I dont have any action shots, but I did take some mid seam shots to demonstrate my set-up.

Pins sticking in my head and wonky lines aside I managed to complete the quilting stage today, which I'm really pleased about! Although now that I'm finished I'm almost tempted to freestyle quilt a flower on every other square. There are two things putting me off: 1. If I freestyle applique them using the machine I wont be able to regulate the size, shape so they will all be slightly different and I'm worried it might look messy. and 2. If I do one I will have to do them all and I'm not sure I'm prepared to applique  50 flowers!! haha. What do you think??

Now just to learn how to bind the edges... better get the books out!! Any one know any good websites with easy to follow tutorials? xxx