My First Try at Foundation Piecing

My daughter has been pestering me for a mat after she kept the mat I prepared earlier in school for her yoga practice. When there was a Quilt Along (QAL) last month at Desi Quilters, I thought of making a mat with the technique. Nima of Made To Treasure taught us the basics of foundation piecing. She provided us with the design For free down load of the design you can visit her blog. All we had to do was to take a print out of the design and stitch it according to her instructions. 

After I brought home the printed copies, I started out to stitch the mat. But the mat came out small. So I added three extra rows and ended up with a 28" square mat. The last row was supposed to be small rectangles pieced together. But half way through I became so lazy and finished it with a pink solid piece on both sides of the small rectangles. Anyhow the result looked promising. Then came the toughest part of my mat making. I had to arrange the quilt top, batting and backing and quilt it. I recently bought the darning presser foot and used it to quilt. At first the lines went crazy but some time later, I was able to control the stitch. Though it is not very neat, for me the mat has come out beautiful. I need to improve my quilting and buy a walking foot to quilt straight lines.  My daughter liked it very much.

These are the foundation pieced pieces.

Nima also taught the technique of mitering the corners.

The toughest piecing. Needed lots and lots of patience to complete this.

My finished quilt top.

I took care to press all the seams so that the back looks neat after finishing.

The finished quilt top. Ready to be quilted.

I made backing with the scraps I had after stitching my daughter's dress.