Granny Square Quilt is FINISHED :D

So, here is the deal.  Late Thursday night I got the reminder email about our Modern Quilt Guild meeting Saturday morning and saw that the theme for the meeting was "group swap blocks and fabric swaps.  This immediately brought to mind the Granny Square swap that I did with my friends.  So what do I do?  Yep, you guessed it, I worked ALL day Friday to get the quilt done.

The first thing I had to do was to trim the blocks.

I trimmed the blocks a 1/4" away from the edge of the outer colored square.

Then I sewed a 2-1/2" white border onto each block.

Next I trimmed all of the blocks to 12" square.

 I did this because it was the best way to get the blocks all square and the same size :)

This is where I enlist the help of my 18 year old.  She is great at arranging blocks for me :)  We laid them out in a 4x6 pattern.  
But wait?  I need a back.  I did have some of my block fabric left over to use for the back and/or the binding.  But I didn't like the leftovers for either.  Then I remembered the fabric I bought at Ikea on clearance a few months ago :)  It would be perfect!  It's just funky enough :)

Once that was all sewn together the "how to quilt" battle began.  I had originally planned to hand quilt it, but I couldn't find my hoop :(  I also wanted this baby DONE!
While I was arguing with my Quilting Ancestors (as Konda put's it), I sewed on a 5" white border around the whole quilt.  I was still himming and hawing when I just decided to machine quilt it.  BUT WHAT DESIGN????
I didn't want to stipple it.  I didn't want stars or squares.  Maybe pebbles?  NO WAIT!!  Flowers?  NO! I'll do the quilting I saw on Myra's blog!!!  PERFECT!!!  It's a kinda-loopy-swirly-ocean-wave-kinda design.
It was a REALLY fast pattern to fmq once I got over my directionally-challenged-ness :)

Lastly, how to bind this quilt?

I sort of liked the left over black from my block, but I didn't have enough :(  ...so I dug into my black stash box... that I sort of forgot I had ;D

There was some OLD black gingham that I don't even know where it came from.

It was PERFECT!!  I really LOVE this quilt :)

So, now for my first BIG quilting mistake :(  In my HUGE hurry to get this quilt finished, I decided to try Red Pepper Quilts binding tutorial.  Let's just say that I REALLY did a BAD job :(  She is a professional and I AM NOT!
After I got home from the guild meeting I took a seam ripper to it and hand sewed it on.  It took me a while, but WOW it looks SO much better.. and I got 3 episodes of Bones in while I did it :)  I even made Chicken Divan for dinner :D ....and washed the laundry and a few quilts that I have been needing to wash, but haven't had any dye catchers to do it.  I'll tell you more about my washing tomorrow :)
Have a GREAT Sunday!!!