Beach Quilt

Despite the subzero temperatures and heaps (and more heaps) of snow around here right now, I made a beach blanket. It was my way of coping with this miserable winter weather, though now I have to wait another couple months to actually use this quilt for its intended purpose.

The pattern is from the book Sew What You Love by Tanya Whelan. This is a great book for sewists of all levels, but it's especially great for beginners. It's one of the few sewing books where I like just about all of the projects. This quilt pattern includes instructions for making five sizes: crib, throw, twin, queen and king. The blanket I made is the throw size (about 60" x 60" finished).

The fabrics are a mix, but mostly consist of cuts from two lines by October Afternoon: Seaside (which is getting hard to find, I hunted mine down on Etsy) and their current line Sidewalks. The colors in each line go well together so it was easy to mix and match. For the backing, I pieced four one yard cuts of different fabrics together since I didn't want to buy four yards of fabric!

The binding is from the line Out to Sea by Sarah Jane for Michael Miller. It's Anchors Away in Banana, and the yellow coordinated perfectly with the other fabrics. I machine stitched the binding--I typically hand sew it, so this was new for me. I think I'm a convert--the convenience of machine stitching was great and I think the binding will hold up better to hard use and lots of machine washes than my hand sewn binding would have.

Now I just have to patiently wait for this to use it:

Happy Quilting.