Finished!

I finished the last step of my YCMT sew-along sock monkey quilt yesterday and am happy with the results! At first I was really daunted by the idea of hand blind-stitching the entire 36" square perimeter, but it actually went really quickly and I got to feel a little like Ma Ingalls, though I was watching The Simpsons on Hulu.com at the time rather than rocking by the light of a oil candle.

Determined to try to use actual scraps as much as possible, I made a really "patchy" binding out of 3" x 4" rectangles, and just about used up my sock monkey scrap bag! To get the most length out of my scraps, I opted to straight-sew the short edges of the patches together rather than sew on the diagonal per the sew-along. There's a reason for sewing on the diagonal; when you fold the binding in half, if you have sewn on the diagonal, your seam is distributed. When you straight-sew, the seam is doubled in the middle of your folded binding and adds a little bulk. I decided this didn't bother me, and I really like the fun patchiness of the binding!



Big thanks to Kim and the crew at You Can Make This for the excellent sew-along!



The cat has some unusual fascination with the quilt ... I don't get it.