Quilty Visitor

We had a little visitor this weekend.
  Notice how I put him to work straight away?

We kept Travis for a couple of nights so his mom could get some sleep. Seems even at almost 15-months, Mr. T has issues with sleeping the night away. He'd much rather be up and running - literally.  
And since Travis likes the menfolk best - daddy, grandpa, Uncle Matt (who, when he stopped by for a few minutes, held out his arms to Travis and the little traitor tried to jump out of my arms and into Matt's. Not that I'm bitter or anything. lol) - I had time to do a bit of quilting while PopPop played lead Travis-entertainer.
  
Thanks to the magic of fabric panels, I put this together in 2 days; granted, the second day lasted until 2 in the morning, but still. Less than 48-hours for a quilt? Not bad, even if it is only Travis-size.
  
This was a make-do-with-what's-in-the-house project. I bought the panel shortly after going nuts over the original fabric at Road To California; the borders are fabric I bought for the seahorse quilt (here); the backing is left over from the pillow Leia and I made for Matt and Mary (here). 
  
Plus, it gave me a chance to put my new baby through her paces.
 
Once everything was pinned together - wonky pinning since I couldn't bring myself to hurt the dragons -
 
I switched in and out between needle-plates (one for plain stitching, one for quilting), and feet (regular, 1/4-inch, dual-feed/walking, free-motion); gave the auto thread-cutter (love it!!) and wind-a-bobbin-while-you-sew a workout; 
 
and - once I remembered I had it - attached the extension table that really does make quilting so much easier.

 

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. Yeah right; I'm thrilled with it.  I did my first machine sewn binding -

  

and while I still prefer hand-stitching the back, this was fast and that's what I needed at 1 a.m.
 
My free-motion quilting doesn't look too bad for a beginner and really, who's going to be looking at that with all these goofy dragons around?
 
They're going to steal the show every time. 

* Stats: quilt was 46 x 25.5" before washing; 43 x 25 after. Dragons are from Days of Yore by RJR Fabrics. Borders - both orange and lime green bubbles - are from Hoffman's 'Calling All Dots' fabric, which coordinates with their Avalon series - the seahorse and mermaid fabric I'm so crazy about.