Beach blanket rollup

I don't remember being much of a picnic person before having kids.  I guess it sounded vaguely good, but not so good that I actually made the effort.  But with kids, it is one of my favorite things to do on a nice day.  We get some time playing outside, and eat lunch.  Leaving all of the crumbs at the park/beach is a nice little bonus too! 

And now we finally have a great picnic blanket to take along with us.  It's DONE!!!  The ugly burgandy thing is no more!  Now it looks like this!

It still lives in my car, but now we'll actually take it out and use it! 

This was a super fast quilt, because it is fairly small, about 45" x 60" and because the quilt top and back aren't pieced, they are just whole sheets of fabric.  Actually they're the SAME fabric, in two different colorways.  I thought that the little frogs and ducks were adorable, and each animal vignette is bordered with a floral design in a lattice design.  It reminded me of vintage storybook illustrations.

Anyways, I cut the front and back about the same size as the burgandy coverlet ("batting") and made my quilt sandwich.  I used a ton of safety pins to hold it all together, and then quilted on the diagnal, following the lines of the fabric.

Then I made double-fold bias tape using THIS AMAZING TECHNIQUE from Shelley Rodgers.  So clever, and very simple once you get the hang of it!  Basically, she has you cut a large corner of your fabric off, and sew it onto the other side, so your fabric is shaped like a parallelogram, rather than a rectangle.  Then you sew it up with an offset of whatever your cut width will be, and you can cut the entire piece into one long strip.  SMART!  Anyways, she explains her method really well, with diagrams and pictures galore.  If you make your own bias tape, this method is well worth learning.

So anyways, I bound the quilt with plaid flannel bias tape, and sewed on an extra lenght of it to use as a tying/carrying strap.  And voila!