A mermaid quilt

Hello! Merry Christmas to you!
Only two days of 2012 to go. I have been a very, very slack blogger this year. Life has been busy to say the least.

But I couldn't let the year end without posting this quilt I made for a friend of Aimee's.

 

 
I first posted about this quilt back in July.
Aimee's friend Ava is mad on mermaids and her mum wanted to have a mermaid themed quilt made for her 8th birthday. 
I showed her some pictures of the mendocino fabric and she fell in love with it. 

After a couple of purchases via etsy I had enough mendocino to make 12 different centre blocks.  The rest of the fabric came from Spotlight.

My favourite of the Spotlight fabric has to be this blue with little circle/spots.  It reminds me of little air bubbles in the water.
 

 
I pieced the back.  I really like how it turned out.
 

 
I kept the quilting simple, just meandering lines across the quilt like waves -
to keep with the water theme.
 

It measures 48.5" wide by 65.5" long. The binding is made up of strips of the various orange Spotlight fabrics pieces together.  I usually make bias binding, with diagonal joins. 
But for this quilt I cut 2 1/2 inch strips on the grain and sewed the pieces together with a straight edge. I did this for a couple of reasons, I had deliberately bought only 25cm of each fabric (I am fairly sick of having off-cuts of fabric stashed everywhere) so had limited fabric to make the binding with, also I like the look of the straight joins and hey its way easier to make!

I machine sewed the binding on, I really hate sewing it on by hand. I also think it's so much stronger and secure and can withstand machine washing which let's face it is how it's gonna be washed.  

  Although I wouldn't think to make an orange and aqua quilt for myself I really, really love this quilt and will have trouble handing it over to Ava tomorrow.

Wishing you a safe, happy and prosperous 2013
xo