My First Mini Finish!

I am pleased to present to you my first mini quilt!

It is also my first quilt that I have taken from start to finish all by myself (with a little help from my mom.  Actually, she helped a lot, but just not with the cutting or stitching :)

I pieced and hand quilted a quilt for my bed when I was a teenager.  My mom and grandma took me through every step of the way on that one.  It's where I learned to hand quilt from two master quilters.

I've also made a couple of Christmas quilts along the way.  I will have to post those beginning quilts some time :)

Over a month ago I showed you this little quilt as a 

"flimsy".

I am so thrilled with the finish!

It took great courage to begin machine quilting it.

There was a lot of this...

...and this

But boy was it worth it!

I had known how I wanted to quilt the solid squares since I was piecing it but the rest just kind of flowed out of the needle :)

My mom had mentioned that she will often hand quilt the borders on her minis and so I took this to New Hampshire with me for some hand work but I just wasn't happy with how it was turning out.

So when I got home I unpicked what I had done and whipped it out on the machine in 8 minutes :)

It's definitely not perfect and I have a lot to learn but overall it was a good experience.

p.s. This photo shoot was inspired by Doniene over at Now It's Just Quilts.

She recently posted some pictures of a couple of her lovely quilts in a cotton field.  It was so beautiful!

I didn't have any cotton around but I did have a couple of burning bushes that I thought might be fun as a backdrop...so there ya go :)