Quilt border and basting

Having constructed the top of my guest book quilt a while ago, the process was interrupted by a house move and the premature birth of our first child.

Picking up where I left off, the quilt needed a border and then the layers needed basting together.

I cut strips of green fabric and pinned the parallel sides to the quilt, sewed them together and pressed the seams before sewing on the other parallel sides:

Here is the inside border with all seams sewn and pressed:

I then did the same for the outer border:

Here's what the top looks like with all the borders done:

I'm sure there are a few different ways to baste a quilt but I used the following method. Firstly I taped the backing fabric (right side down) to a flat surface. I do usually cut off the selvedge off but this piece of fabric was larger than the quilt design so I knew it would be trimmed off later:

Then the wadding was added on top before the completed quilt design. All the layers were pinned together using curved pins. It's best to work from the centre out towards the edges. 

Next step: sewing and then the final edging.

The Guest Book

It's time to finish off the wedding guest book, otherwise known as the wedding quilt. All the squares have now been received (some of them making a journey to Australia and back) so it's time to sew them all together.

I prepared all the squares before they were signed; sewing the design together, trimming and putting tape over the seam allowance. This was to save me time when assembling the quilt.

Firstly, I took off the tape and laid out all the squares until I was happy with the design:

Each square was sewn together in a row (right sides together):

Before the rows were sewn together:

All of the seams were pressed. This was done row by row and then the bigger block.

Next step is purchasing some wadding and backing fabric before basting all the layers together.