Springtime Blooms...in the Summer

The Beast is finished!  Although now that it's done, I should probably start referring to it by its given name- Springtime Blooms.  I finished the binding this afternoon, and I hate that I'm a little late to the Friday Finish parties (hangs head in shame)- but better late than never!

Thanks so much to everyone who gave name suggestions.  The name Springtime Blooms is kind of a mash-up of lots of the ideas that were given, and since the fabric is called Spring Magic by April Cornell, I decided to throw part of that in there too for good measure.

To keep the quilting from adding to the busy pattern, I decided to quilt with a simple meandering, but I did use soft pink thread and I just love it!  I think it looks so sweet with the little pink dots in the backing fabric.

The backing fabric is Marguerite by Riley Blake in Yellow Scallops.  There is a little shop near me that makes applique t-shirts, bunting, and other fabricy gifts.  They aren't a quilt shop, but they do have a small (but awesomely cute) selection of fabric.  They also happen to be right next door to my nail salon, so I always pop over there when I get a pedicure.  And boy, am I glad I did last week!  I found this fabric on clearance for $3.00 a yard and it just went perfectly with it.  Score!!  I promptly bought the rest of the bolt.

I picked a dreamy shade of aqua for the binding, with the hope that it would bring out that color in the quilt even more.  The pink, yellow, and apple green are so "in your face" that I wanted to bring the aqua out a little bit.  I wanted the binding choice to be a little less expected, and I think it worked.

I had a couple of personal quilty victories on this one, which is good after the initial seam matching annoyance.  First of all, I managed to quilt this gigantic thing on my regular home machine (even though it was slow going) without a single pucker on the backing- not even a tiny one!  That's a first for a big quilt for me, and enough to make me jump up and down, y'all.  Seriously.  Jumping up and down.

Secondly, I managed to use every single scrap of this fabric in this quilt.  It began as a 40 FQ bundle, and even though the quilt finishes at 80 x 100 inches (a generous queen size), I still had plenty to piece into the backing.  So nothing goes back into stash (or even scrap).  YAY!!

All in all, I still don't prefer making bed-sized quilts.  I much prefer quilts that are the perfect snuggle size- about 60 x 60.  But, at least I know that I can make one this big and still have it come out looking decent.

Next week, amongst first week of school stuff, I'm getting down to business on the other two memory quilts made from my grandfather's shirts.  If you missed those at the beginning of the summer, you can check out Western Kaleidoscope and Bricks and Mortar to see what I'm talking about.  After all of this girly sewing, I have to get back into the manly quilt groove.