Hello Betty...It's A Girl!

I finished this quilt just two days before Baby Zoe was born.  For the sake of getting the quilt finished, it's a good thing she was over a week late, although not for her poor mother.  Again, I didn't know whether the quilt was going to be for a boy or a girl until the baby was born.  Zoe's mom already has two boys so I was hoping it would end up being for a girl.

I started this quilt when I got my new sewing machine (a Janome Magnolia 7330).  I already had a quilt top pieced and didn't want to jump right into quilting with my new machine.  I had a Hello Betty charm pack sitting around so I starting organizing them into a patchwork quilt.  Then I played with offsetting the squares and I really liked how it looked.  I also liked how it didn't require me to match up my corners.  I added white sashing strip to make it a little bigger and to make the colors pop a little more.  The finished size is 43" x 45."

The backing is also from the Hello Betty line by Moda and it has a yellow binding.  I quilted a 1/4" from both sides of the horizontal seams and in the ditch around the patchwork.  I thought this would be the quilt I tried free motion quilting on but I didn't have a darning or FMQ foot and didn't feel like running to the store again, so I went back to the straight lines.  In the end, I really liked the modern look of it with straight lines.

The pictures aren't quite doing this quilt justice.  It's a lot more vibrant in person and the backing doesn't look like digital camoflauge in real life.