My 13th Quilt: Camping Patchwork

First, the technicalities: 
My poor skill at photography is not aided by the less than picturesque look of this winter. This are too bright, too stark, and I haven't a clue how to try to over come that. I've tried to edit the photos as best I can, but I know they're not the best. If anyone has tips on how to take better photos in these kinds of circumstances, please let me know - I need to learn! 

Final 'finish' photo

This Camping Patchwork was my second 'unloved' quilt. When things didn't work quite as I'd planned during the initial 'patch working' phase, instead of powering through - or restarting - I set it aside and allowed my mistakes to make me think this one was a total loss.

Where I gave up...

 It took me a long time to get up the courage to pick it apart where needed, and piece it back together in a better way.

When I picked it up again

 Once the patchwork was looking a little less ugly, it didn't take long to add a yellow border and feel like the top was complete:

Unfortunately, the back put up a bit of a fight as well. I was going to a slightly pieced back, but a measuring error put me off by 11 inches, and led to the addition of the dark red fabric on the back.

I didn't love it, but I pushed through because I had high hopes it would be my last finish of 2012. Instead, thanks to a red/blue scrappy binding, it was my first finish of 2013. Binding went on at about 12:45 a.m. January First.

A few days later, when I was getting ready to put it in the wash at last and finally check it off the list - I realized to my horror that several inches of the binding were in the process of coming undone! Although I used the same method of machine sewing the binding in place as always, I had some serious flaws in the application process. Fixing these issues would have required unpicking two lines of stitching for at least the length of one side of the quilt. And to be honest, I didn't want to do that.

So, I set to town with my scissors and clipped off the red/blue binding as closely to the stitching as possible and set out to replace it with something I hoped would match both front and back a little better than the red/blue had:

Brown with cream dots!

Huge improvement. I don't regret the change at all.

Sadly, I still had a tiny flaw in the binding application, but rather than trying to unpick it (clearly, an idea I'm against, at least when it comes to two lines of stitching and this kind of minky or whatever it's called), I did a couple lines of tight zig-zag over it and called it good.

So perfect, it is not. But I finally love it. And that's more important to me.

And still the first finish of 2013.

I can't get over how much better the new binding looks against the back. 100% improvement. No question in my mind.

All materials came from my stash.
No intended recipient yet. And honestly, I might just keep this one. Someday there may be little ones hanging around my house, and this seems like a perfect quilt for a play surface or a picnic.

Well... I might be convinced to give it away... but only to the perfect home. What can I say, after so many months of feeling rather beaten up by this one, it is utterly freeing to finally be in love with it!