The Quilt is Finished!

I am so happy to finally have this project done.  It has been long and hard for me.  But a good learning experience.  I am not sure I will ever at will be attempt another one.  If I do it will be a lot less piecing together.  So here it is.

 Back side:

 Close up:

I am overall very happy with it.  There are certainly lots of little mistakes throughout it so I don't want anyone inspecting it.  But for my first quilt I cannot complain.

Here is the pattern I followed.  This pattern assumes you have quilted before though so I had to go a few other places for help. 
These are a few of the other places I went for help.
Here is a quilt along series that was helpful.
Here is a good binding tutorial
A few tips I had to ask somebody about.  When I bought my batting I was unsure of a few things.  I didn't want a puffy quilt so I was told to buy cotton batting.  If you want it puffier go with the polyester.  Also do not prewash your batting.  I left my batting and back piece larger than the front whilst I quilted it and then I trimmed it down before binding. That way it left some room to stretch and pull while quilting.
I also planned on quilting around shapes.  I got a shape and a half in and decided that was ten times harder, so I unpicked them and just went free style.  Those two shapes and unpicking took as long as free hand quilting the rest.

So if I can make a quilt anyone can.  It was mostly fun.  I can honestly say blood sweet and tears went into it.  And I really love the result.