Lesson Learned!

I have so many stories of terrible, terrible, terrible mistakes I have made while learning to sew.  But one I am not going to make anymore is to ask for help if I need it.  I am lucky to have some quilty friends who have helped me out from time to time.  I am making a concerted effort to get into the habit of asking for help when I need it instead of trying to work it out on my own--wasting my precious free time, frustrating myself, and adding to my gigantic UFO pile.  And, I am going to start taking classes at the LQS. 

Today I took a private lesson in binding from one of the LQS instructors who happens to live basically across the street.  Doing a good binding has been so mystifying to me and I've seen so many tutorials on how to do it, that I was just bungling it up time and time again.  It was so frustrating to see my beautiful and time-consuming pieced quilt top get uglied up by my unprofessional looking binding.  But, I am happy to report that the private lesson paid off and was worth ten times the price I paid for it!   Exhibit A:

I have never met a more perfect mitered corner on any quilt I've ever put binding on!  Here's a photo of the complete quilt.  It's quite small--made with some leftover Deb Strain Love Is In The Air charms--and my 2 year old has already staked a claim to it.  I attached the binding to the back and have pinned it all down to the front except for a small 6 inch piece where I ran out of pins!!!  I plan to machine sew it to the front tonight after bedtime.

I also have ratcheted up my machine quilting skills and have branched out from just quilting squiggles.  This time I did nice little flourishes and curliques all over and it looks pretty great!

And I also finished up this table topper that I made for my cousin.  I have a square table topper of the same fabrics on a round table in our living room that she's admired before, so I made this one for her kitchen table.  I plan to give it to her for Mother's Day.

And I'm also partial to the quilting on this one as well.  I tried to make viney leaves on the back of this (it's backed with brick red linen) and I quite like it, too.  After my lesson in binding today, I've decided to sign up for a machine quilting class next month.