DQS 10 - Hope Valley Circles

It's finished!  I finished hand sewing the binding down this afternoon while catching up on my DVR, and I must say, that while I usually find hand sewing binding to be my least favorite part of the quilting process (hence why I usually machine sew my quilt bindings) I actually enjoyed spending this last little bit of time working on this quilt.

As for the binding, I used verykerryberry's single fold binding tutorial and I am really pleased with how it turned out.  I had used this tutoral for my Mug Rug in the Mug Rug Swap, and yet again this tutorial did not dissapoint.  I really like how the binding is nice and tight and not bulky at all.  This will certainly be my go to binding technique for smaller projects from here on out.

Here are a few close up pictures of the hand quilting.  I was a little unsure of how I'd like hand quilting in general but I must say, that I really enjoyed the actual quilting and love the extra layer of design that it adds to the quilt itself.  I would love to one day hand quilt a larger quilt...maybe one day.

As for the backing, I cut 5 1/2 inch charm squares using Hope Valley and put together a simple patchwork pieced back.

As for the label, I had some of that photo fabric iron on paper, so I printed out a little label with the DQS 10 logo and mine and my partners info and voila! 

I really enjoyed creating this quilt, and am so glad that I decided on this design as opposed to the others that I had floating around as possibilities, as it challenged me to try new things, and I really think that my partner will be uber pleased with it. 

Now off to decide on what goodies to include with it!