The binding is done, so that means my quilt is really really finished, right?

After a year of tedious work, my quilt is finished!  There are so many steps along the way that give a quilter a false sense of accomplishment, since at the end of every stage, it just means another more arduous task is waiting.

First, it's all the cutting.  Then when you've cut everything, you have to make all the blocks.  When that's finished, you have to piece the blocks together.  Then baste the top to the batting and back.  THEN quilt the whole thing.  THEN BIND IT.  A few times, I came close to screaming, "When is it going to stop?!?!"

But it finally has!  

During the binding process

The pattern I used was a freebie from a quilting magazine...I forget which now.  It didn't come with a name, so I've just been calling it the lattice quilt.  I've recently found out that the basic block is called an "Indian hatchet," although most Indian hatchet quilts look very different from this one.  

The blocks were machine pieced on my trusty Kenmore home sewing machine, while the quilting and binding were done entirely by hand.  The reason for this madness?  First, I couldn't fit the quilt under the arm of my machine, especially in the center.  Second, I could not find a local person to hire to do the quilting, either by hand or longarm machine.  I since found a quilting service nearby, The Meandering Fox,  but that was only after I had started and hand-quilted about a third of it.  

And now that I type this, I realize that I'm still not really done with the quilt.  I promised my husband that he could write an inscription and I would embroider it on one of the blocks, so it is technically incomplete, even though I slept under it last night.