a cross quilt for the neighbors

After all that crocheting, I have a new quilt to show.  This one I made for my wonderful neighbors who are always so sweet to the boys.  We spent a little time getting to know them and they are by far the best and most welcoming neighbors we've ever had (and we've had a lot of neighbors).  I hope to spend more time getting to know them in the coming years.

Because quilts take so much time, I looked for something new to try that didn't involve me calculating a lot of math.  I'm not typically opposed to that (math is my all time favorite subject) but I knew it would take much longer if I had to do that part too.  So I basically just did exactly what Sew Katie Did quilted here in her cross quilt.  I even decided to use the same type of quilting she used in her quilt because that is another part of the process that takes me a while.  I used light blue thread to quilt this, so it's a little hard to see.

I cut the pieces a little differently, too.  In addition to all those squares, I used some rectangles so I wouldn't divide up the larger prints.  Katie had a link to this tutorial here by her friend Meaghan, so I used Meaghan's tutorial to cut my pieces.

I found all of these prints at JoAnn's, and many of them are of them are by DS Quilts including this backing.  I used just this print for the back.

I chose to bind the quilt in red to pull out the red from the backing as well as a few of the prints on the front.  I really like how the red pops, especially against this green.

This was my second attempt at machine binding.  I usually enjoy hand binding, but in the interest of time, I utilized my machine.  It took about a quarter of the time.  With this second attempt, I researched how to do it first and it really worked out well.  I used the method described by Red Pepper Quilts, but I think Crazy Mom Quilts has a good one, too, that's just slightly different.