Lesson Learned:

Make hubby come along for the quilt photo shoot. :)

I may be good (and getting better) at making quilts. They are fun and cute, if I do say so myself. However...I know almost nothing about photography. Even with a fancy camera like Andrew's...someone who doesn't know how to wield it is not going to get a lot of amazing shots!

I got some ok ones. Definitely acceptable for the first time I've done an actual "photo shoot" for one of my quilts. And in the interest of time, I did it by myself, because I know if I take Andrew, my 10 min walk around the apartment complex and take some pictures is going to turn into an hour and about 1000 shots. :) He takes great photos. Every single one would turn out. But he's a perfectionist and to him, it's important to take 30 different shots from slightly different angles. :P This is where we're different.

I think I've decided to call it Ripple, Baby, Ripple. Maybe :P I was thinking along the lines of Baby's Beach Umbrella...and then when I was taking photos near the pool, it reminded me of the ripples on the water in the sunlight...you know how they catch all those colors...and the quilt has that red and orange and yellow tossed in...I don't know. I also really liked it under the willow tree. 

I did a scrappy binding with some leftover fabric from the fat quarters used. I accidentally cut the strips too thin and had to make up a way to do the binding that I haven't done before. It turned out a little weird, but it works. It was a long process of folding it in half, then ironing it, then unfolding it and ironing in the sides so that they almost meet the middle, then attaching it to the quilt with both sides folded under. I didn't take any pictures and it's hard to explain, but suffice it to say, I wont be using that method to bind again any time soon.

Also, for the quilting I tried a "free motion straight line" method. That basically just means I don't use the walker foot and I try to keep the lines as straight as possible. It gives it an organic feel. I think it added to the ripple feel cause I'm not good at the "straight" portion. :P I was pretty disappointed at first and after several lines thought about ripping it out and doing something else. But...I stuck with it, reminding myself it's never as bad as it seems. And it wasn't! Towards the end I decided with a few of the more open grid spaces to do some back and forth swirls. It turned out really cute! I actually really love it. There is one photo where you can see what I mean. They are like little drops on the water that create all those ripples!

Ripple, Baby, Ripple is now for sale in my Etsy shop!