DIY Project: Baby Quilt

I've been inspired by a lot of quilts lately, which I found rather odd, since I've never made a quilt in my life. A few weekends ago, I finally took the plunge, and made my very first ever quilt, as a gift for my friend's baby. I waited until now to post it, as I didn't want to ruin the surprise for my friend. I'm gifting it today, so finally it is safe to post.

I drew the design for each side myself, and improvised the process while I went along, which really were the easy bits. Then came the actual quilting, the process of joining the layers together. Instead of a simple square, or fancy pattern, I chose to quilt the layers together in small, evenly spaced stitches, to keep the quilt fluffy. Keeping all layers wrinkle free proved to be quite the challenge, but it worked out in the end. For the binding I used one of the fabrics in the quilt, ironed into a long, double-folded strip. Both the quilting & the binding were the biggest PITA of the whole project, and neither turned out perfectly.

I didn't bother taking photos during the process, since I figured a quilt tutorial from me to anyone else would be the equivalent of the blind leading the blind. Luckily, if improvised crafting is not your thing, there are a lot of great quilting tutorials out there, from people who actually do know what they are doing.

Here is my finished quilt:

I never knew quilts were so tricky to photograph.

I think it turned out pretty cute, and I'm happy with it, especially for it being my first try. I really love the bunting design side, (I'm so glad I added it, since I had originally planned on using just a patterned fabric on that side), and the random patchwork turned out pretty well, although I will definitely try a more precise pattern next time.

Is it weird giving an imperfect quilt that you cluelessly made?