Completed, Finally.

It took me about 2 months, but it's done now.  The Hooty Hoot Kangaroo Quilt for baby Kenny (Kenny is the son of some friends of ours, now about 7 weeks old).

I was just about in tears when I finished it, I was soooo happy and excited and proud to have it done!  I learned a TON from it.  It was my first venture into free-hand quilting, and let me tell ya:  That is not an easy thing to do!

I can't even tell you how many hours I spent ripping out stitches gone wrong because I didn't realize that despite how good the stitches looked on the front, they looked horrible on the back (the picture above is just one example... there were SO many spots where the stiches pulled on the back!)

I based the quilt off of the cover quilt on the book "quilts, bibs, blankies...oh my!" by Kim Schaefer.  Instead of applique blocks, I used blocks off of the Hooty Hoot Kangaroo Panel, adding borders to make them 12" square.  Originally, I was going to do a pieced border, just like in the book.  I based my binding choice off of that, but the quilt already seemed huge at that point so I cut out the pieced border & now I wish I wouldn't have because the border blends in with the binding.

Fabrics used:
Hooty Hoot Kangaroo by Doohikey Designs
Kate and Nate by Sherri Berry
Love U by Deb Strain

I can't remember the border or binding fabrics, unfortunately.  The backing is mostly some mottled blue flannel from Joannes, with a strip of the Kate and Nate flannel, so its super soft and cuddly. 

This is my favorite block with echo quilting in it... I added some quilting in the waves, and I just love how that turned out.

Things I learned:
*Cleaning your machine is important. 
*How to clean a machine (ugh!)
*Needle choice really does matter
*So does thread choice
*My old machine does have a feed dog guard, so I didn't have to keep taping and untaping a piece of cardboard over them
*Instead of spending money on a single hole throat plate, an index card taped onto the feed dog guard with a hole poked through it works just as well. 
*Check the back of the quilt before quilting the entire thing
*I need a better labeling marker!

What's next you may ask??  Well, Christmas is right around the corner... I may be showing peeks of what I'm working on, but I don't want to make it too easy for anyone to guess what they're getting for Christmas, so I may be a bit secretive.  Hehehe.