my pretty little GIANT star surround is finished...

Hey everyone! Look! It's all finished! I really enjoyed this QAL and having the weekly assignments. It sure made it go super fast. I started this quilt last month while Mr. Relish was traveling for work, so to keep myself company I started watching Pretty Little Liars on Netflix. I seem to always pick a new series to get hooked on while he's gone 1-2 weeks at a time and then he is forced to watch them with me when he returns...ha! Sorry, Mr. Relish! So all summer while I was working on the quilt here an there, I had PLL going in the background and hence the title of this post.



Melissa at Happy Quilting hosted this QAL and also designed the quilt. She designed it so you could pick from multiple block and quilt sizes and then gave us all the fabric and cut requirements needed and lined up several fabric stores to provide quilt bundles for the QAL. Can we say, awesome! Well, I was totally lame and went rouge by making not just one big block, which Melissa provides the measurements for, but one GIANT block! I went up two sizes, so to speak, and made a 64 inch square block. I absolutely loved the look with the multiple blocks, but was in the middle of the Swoon 2013 QAL and knew I would get tired of making all those star blocks. Since I had also pinned some of those giant swoon blocks floating around the blogosphere and then saw a recent finish by Amy Smart at Diary of a Quilter, I knew what had to be done...



I pulled 10 FQ from my awesome Hand Drawn Garden with matching solids bundle that I ordered from Westwood Acres and then went to my LQS to get the charcoal background fabric. I don't recall the name of the background fabric because I suck at writing things down but I think it's a Robert Kaufman print. I only picked it because it was the closest shade of charcoal that I was looking for in the store. I had some perfect charcoals in my stash but not enough and was too impatient to order online. Y'all know the drill!



I didn't realize the large cuts were for the no waste flying geese (genius by the way!), otherwise I would've used a print along with the solids. Oh well, it turned out to be a happy mistake anyway. If you would like to see exactly how I cut mine, check out my check-in post that gives all those details and also see how the quilt came together.



The backing is Kona Willow and very similar, but not quite, to the darker greens found in the prints. Because it wasn't exactly what I wanted, I had a hard time committing to it. Then, in usual Mr. Relish fashion, he makes a smart comment about refinishing the pool table (we don't own a pool table) because the shade of green was pool table-esque I suppose. Anyway, since I bought the fabric specifically for this quilt I needed to use it. I took some of the scraps and made a patchy strip down the side and called it a finish...sort of.



I went with a spiral quilting about 1 1/2-2 inches apart (perfection not necessary). I FMQed the first 10 circles then moved to my walking foot. It took about 2-3 hrs to do and that includes turning my head a bit to watch PLL. Thread of choice was Gutermann in a light gray at 4.0 stitch length.



As you can see I went with the yellow binding and so happy I did! I suck again and don't remember the details of this fabric because it came from my Pink Castle Stash of the Month. I only remember the names of fabrics if they arrive in a collection. Since my stash prints are pretty generic looking, it's hard to keep up with names and sometimes the name doesn't make the selvage cut. Oh, and I'm lame and never write anything down.

Well, I think that's all I got, but here is a funny story for y'all...

Because I had a specific place in the yard that I wanted to take the pictures for the quilt, I had to wait two days for my timing and lighting to sync. So when it was nap time yesterday and realized there was overcast outside, I grabbed the quilt and camera and hightailed it to the front/side of the house. We live on a corner lot of a busy road and expected to have some awkward, self-conscious moments as cars drove by. Well, while I was hanging up the quilt, I felt like I was being watched, but no one was walking on the sidewalks. I quickly scanned the area and immediately noticed the neighbors across the busy street standing in their doorway just staring, pointing, and talking...Awkward! So, naturally I just waved and yelled "hello" and they quickly retreated back inside and shut the door. They must have thought they were being discrete since they weren't all the way out the door. Ummm, NO! I carried on about my business knowing I'm not longer the weird neighbor because I'm hanging quilts on trees.

Linking up with Melissa at Happy Quilting and Crazy Mom Quilts and all the lovely links to the right!