I made this quilt as a gift for my oldest granddaughter and gave it to her on her 19th birthday. My daughter, pieced this simple rail fence top together when she was in high school, but never finished it. It got passed to me and I’ve held on to it for years.Now that I’ve taken up the art of quilting, finishing this quilt as a gift for my granddaughter was high on my list of projects. It didn’t take long to find a suitable fabric from our quilting guild stash for the backing. It looks like it came from the same era, the 90’s!I tried a new free motion quilt pattern, a meandering loopy design with occasional flowers. It worked out very nicely, although, it took about 8 hours to quilt.I used my tried-and -true binding method, which is stitched on by machine. It looks so pretty with the tiny contrasting flange edge. I probably will never hand sew another binding, since this looks so wonderful. It is stronger and also practically invisible.

 You use 1 1/4 in strips for the binding, and 1 1/2 in strips for the flange. The strips are sewn together, seam pressed, and then folded in half. The flange fabric faces up and is sewn to the back side of the quilt. When you fold it over to the front, the binding fabric covers the edge and just a tiny edge of the flange fabric extends out. You can machine stitch in the ditch, and it turns out wonderfully!

Needless to say, my granddaughter was delighted with her new quilt and it’s history: top pieced by Mom at age 17, completed by Grandma 20 years later.