Making a boomerang quilt.

I've been wanting to start a quilt for years. So this year in between Christmas and New Years, I quit thinking about it and just got started!

I spotted this great quilt pattern on Pinterest many months ago. I loved its modern-retro design and thought "THAT is the quilt I need to make!" I ventured back to the photo to try to figure out how I could ever reproduce it, I discovered that Megan, the quilt creator had generously outlined the construction, step-by-step, in a series of tutorial posts. I totally lucked out! I used the same dimensions as the tutorial, but made mine a bit longer at 48"x 60" instead of 48" square. Here are a few of my instagram process shots:

 

1. I started the actual work after Christmas, but had been accumulating fabrics for a few months already. I used primarily solids, since I wanted the pieced pattern standout, but I threw in a few subtle patterns (a green and black tiny polkadot, a yellow tonal dot pattern, a deep teal with little bird footprints, and the tonal white pattern for one of the background colors). I purchased 1/2 yard of each accent color and 1 1/2 yards of each background color.

 

2. Cutting, cutting, cutting, strips and squares. I also measured, cut, and marked many phone book pages for the paper piecing.

 

3. My first block! I made one all the way through to make sure I was doing everything correctly. Looks pretty good to me!

 

4. The assembly line begins. Stacks and stacks of partially finished blocks sewn to phone book pages.

 

5. As the blocks were finished, I started playing with the layout. 

 

6. When I had all the blocks sewn and ironed, I layed the entire thing out on my bed - the biggest flat surface in my apartment! I snapped photos with my phone when I found a layout I liked so I could recreate it when I was sewing everything together.

 

7. Two blocks of 16 next to eachother. It's coming along!

 

8. I finally got the last two strips done and pieced the rest of the blocks last Friday night. I'm so happy with the way it came together.

 

The top is complete. Not bad for my first quilt in 18 years! All I have left to do is the backing, and the binding, and the actual quilting... So I've got a ways to go. I'm not sure what kind of fabric I want to use for the backing. At first I was thinking of a lively pattern with lots of colors, but now I'm thinking maybe a more monochrome pattern in teal. I'll have to go shopping and see what I find!

Does anyone know of a good binding tutorial online? If so, can you send it my way? I'll be going into that part blind and can use all the help I can get! I'm also planning on doing all of the quilting (just straight lines) on my machine, so I'm hoping it will cooperate with me.