Finished Twin Quilts

I meant to post about these quilts last week and totally spaced it. I guess that's what you get when you're chasing after three little kids, working full-time, and never feeling like there are enough hours in a day.

Anyway, here are my first FINISHED quilts of 2012! Took me long enough, right?

I mentioned in this WIP Wednesday post that my nephew and his wife had twin boys a couple months after I had my baby. We were so excited for them! And while I was floored at the thought of becoming a great-aunt at 29 (although, let's be honest, I've been a "great" aunt since I was 5), I was super excited for my parents to become great-grandparents and for my sister to become a grandma. The only downside is that my nephew and his little family live thousands of miles away in Chile and I won't be able to meet these little guys anytime soon.

And while I couldn't be there to help out while the babies were in the NICU or while my nephew and his wife were living away from home to be close to the hospital, I could make them quilts.

First up is Jayden's quilt. I used a couple-year-old sock monkey print from Moda for this one. I cut 10-inch squares and then stacked them together for the stack and whack method.

I added the green Heather Bailey print (Winter Road in Slate from her Nicey Jane line) for more color variety and used the leftover pieces for a scrappy binding. On the back, I used the sock monkey books fabric, which I happened to get for a steal at my LQS (like 75% off!).

Next up is Sam's quilt. This space robot fabric is from David Walker's Robots line for FreeSpirit. I had a bunch leftover from my son's quilt and decided to use it to make an offset squares quilt inspired by Jessica's Baby Blocks quilt. I added in the green and gray fabrics (I Heart Gears from Rashida Coleman Hale's I Heart line and Kona Charcoal) since I didn't have quite enough robot fabric.

I used the gear fabric for the backing and a Kona yellow for the binding (not sure the exact color).

My typical binding method is to machine stitch the binding to the back of the quilt and then sew it to the front with a nice topstitch. However, I bent my walking foot a while back and my binding has been bothering me on the last few quilt I've made. I used my typical method on Jayden's quilt, but half way through attaching the binding to the front, my walking foot totally stopped working. So I had to use my regular foot to finish. For Sam's quilt, I decided to try Kati's machine binding method, which she demoed at one of our guild meetings. Her method consists of stitching the binding to the front of the quilt, folding it over to the back, and then stitching in the ditch on the front while catching the binding on the back. I was skeptical at first, thinking that I'd have a hard time catching the fabric underneath that I couldn't see. But, after trying it on Sam's quilt, I'm pretty much sold...and I can do it easily without my walking foot.

One of my sisters is making a couple diaper bags using the scraps that I had leftover from the quilts. So, as soon as she finishes those, I hope to get these shipped to their new owners ASAP. It's almost winter in Chile and those babies need to stay warm!