First time FMQ, What was I worried about!

Soon after I witched eloquently discussed what to do about my big star Baby quilt Karen from Stitching Puma suggested quilting would really make it better. Now here is a confession, I LOVE the piecing of the quilt tops, but the quilting part always kind of put me off. There was no way I could do it on my own. But after going to a quilting shop and getting the pricing 

($50.00!!!!) I decided for that price I could figure it out on my own! 

So I pulled out some scraps and the Simply Retro Book by Camille Roskelley that I received this Christmas and made a quick turn dash baby quilt. 

  Then after extensive Utube enlightenment on free motion quilting I took the plunge, and made a few mistakes as you can see ( don't worry I'll point them out for you!) I thought just a basic stipple stitch would work, but as you can see there were a few errors in the work. That was the first corner, and I found that it was to tight. I noticed that if I was slow in my stitching, the stitches were closer together,choppy, and angled 

When I just put the peddle down and went for it you can see a big difference. 

I chose to do the stitching in the red because there really was so much white space in this quilt. It only took 20 min to piece together with some large ( 10") HST so it had a very plain look to it, I really love the red thread. Karen was right, the quilting really does make a HUGE difference! 

I even like it on the back. The red really makes the back more intricate and complex looking then it really is.

The best part, from this angle you can't even see the free motion mistakes. 

The binding did NOT turn out the way I had intended, I normally use a bias tape maker, but for this one I just cut 2" strips from the left over fabric and folded them over to use as binding. I should have gone a whole 1/2 inch larger to give me room and not have the corners pucker as much as they did 

Also I did NOT know it took that much thread to Quilt. I can not believe how often my bobbin ran out.  Thank goodness I had another spool of red thread on hand. I used a small 250 yd roll and still had 1/3 left to go! 

BUT I am happy with it. 

What do you think. Not bad for a first try! And talk about a quilt going from BLAH to OHHH! I love the texture that it gives the big old boring white spots!