nest triangle quilt

Around May, I took my very carefully horded 3 charm packs of Tula Pink's nest and turned them into half-square triangles.

I matched them up with 5 inch squares of Kona cotton white and sewed around all 4 edges.  They were each very carefully sprayed with spray starch (both sides) and ironed carefully.  Next they were cut diagonally, corner to corner, into 4 triangles.  Each triangle was opened, carefully ironed - with more spray starch - and then trimmed to 3".  The bias edges of the squares were never a problem - probably due to the 2 bottles of spray starch I used. :)  Here's the drawing I made in publisher to make sure that this would all work out.  (Technically, I could have trimmed to 3 1/8" ... but I wanted a bit more margin.)
 

All that work resulted in this:

That after much agonizing of layouts morphed into:

And evolved into piles of this in July.

I decided to back it in minky and searched for a long time trying to find something that would match.  Blue and aqua weren't quite right.  I even though of matching the 'watermelon pink', but I really didn't want a pink blanket.  I finally found teal minky on fabric.com and it matches close enough.

My first attempt at machine quilting was with the minky, two layers of cotton batting, and then the top.  It didn't seem that heavy or thick, but I could not get a consistent stitch length on my machine - even with the walking foot.  I think the minky fabric was just slick enough that the feed dogs wouldn't grab it.  I sewed about half of the horizontal lines before ripping it all apart and trying again with just one layer of minky.  That went much better, but I had to make sure the quilt was being supported at all times or the stitches would go wonky.   I had all of the horizontal and vertical lines (1/4" on both sides of the seams) and half of the diagonal lines sewn on one long Saturday.  One more evening of sewing finished up the diagonals and then it took a few hours of knotting and finishing the ends off inside of the quilt. Note to self: do not do that much quilting just to rip it out!

For binding, I bought Jade Kona Cotton and Azalea Moda Bella Solid.  They both matched the front pretty well, but the jade wasn't an exact match to the minky.  I decided to put a little sliver of the jade around the quilt and the bind it in the azalea.    I cut the jade at 1.25" wide, thinking I could fold it in half, 1/4 seam allowance, and still be able to see it.  Next time I'll try it at just 1" wide.  The binding is my standard 3" wide folded in half.  And both were cut on the bias.

An evening watching Madagascar 2 and 3 while babysitting and the binding was sewn down.

Here it is.  My Nest Half-Square Triangle quilt:

Here's the back.

I love this quilt. I love the colors, the texture, and the fuzzy back.  My only issue is that this quilt is warm!

Quilt stats:
fabric - Nest by Tula Pink and White Kona Cotton.  Backing is Minky Cuddle 3 in Teal from fabric.com
straighline quilted by me on my Janome
Size: ~50" x 60"