Quilt Finish - Froga

This morning I finished my Froga quilt. 

It's named Froga because the focal point is a frog doing yoga.  It's a small quilt, 21" x 23", that I made as part of my Miniature Quilt Club.  I took my inspiration from Cathy Gaubert's Ticker Tape Quilt, from her book "Pretty in Patchwork: Doll Quilts".

It was FUN to make.  Everything except the frog and the word "Simplicity" is from my scrap bags.  I want to make another quilt in this style, as soon as I find interesting focal fabric.  That will be high on my shopping list at the International Quilt Show in April.

I fussy cut some of the scraps to play up the yoga theme.  The layer of flowers above the frog buffers the enthusiastic duck drumming.  I had a smidgen of recycling-themed fabric left - that's the "Save Energy" square to the right of the duck.

The directions called for using a glue stick or other adhesive to attach the scraps to the background.  I didn't want a glue stick gumming up my sewing machine innards, nor did I want the stiffness of fusible web.  So I used stickpins as my basting.

When I made my sandwich, I put safety pins only on the white fabric, then removed whatever pin (stick or safety) was in my way as I did the vertical rows of quilting.  Some of the rows aren't the straightest, but I was trying to hit all the edges since the fabric is raw edge and I didn't want too big a hunk flapping out there on the edges.

Butterflies and hearts and flowers are fussy cut to fit in with a mindful frog...

... but other scraps were chosen purely for their color.

I did a different kind of binding than I usually do.  My usual is a continuous binding, where I piece the strips together with a 45 degree cut on each end.  Then after stitching the binding to the quilt, I have to deal with seaming together the two open ends.  Yuk.

Today I was in a hurry since I wanted to take this quilt for show and tell at my Modern Quilt Club this morning.  And I only had 90 minutes to bind it, make a sleeve and label, and attach said sleeve and label.

So I did NOT do continuous binding.  I bound one edge at a time.  First I did the sides and left a raw edge at the top and bottom.  Then when I sewed the top and bottom bindings on, I folded under the ends and it made a nice neat edge to encase the raw edges from the side bindings.  

I'm going to use this method on all my miniature quilts - so much faster.  And I'm really into machine stitching my binding, instead of hand stitching it.

On the back you get a better look at the frog yoga.  I only had 1/2 yard, so that's why I pieced the green/black/white floral onto the upper edge.  Then I used that same fabric for the sleeve.

The label.

And a pig doing savasana.  

Hey - aren't your eyes supposed to be closed during this pose?!?