Doing the Happy Dance!!

I am totally doing the happy dance this morning!! The Scrappy Bargello is FINISHED!!! WOOHOO! 

If you are so inclined, you can read my trials and tribulations with this quilt here, here, here, (you are kidding me right?) here, here, (seriously??) here, here, (how much can there be to say about one quilt??) here, and FINALLY here.  Wowsers! At one point in this process I put in a post that I was obsessed with this quilt - there's your proof!! LOL I have to admit, there were times that I really questioned whether those two panels I started with would ever become a quilt.... BUT IT DID! and here it is!! :)

It is kinda cloudy out this morning but I was too excited to wait to take the pictures.... :)

This quilt it sooo big it is hard to get a good picture of it!

Trying different angles LOL

^                       Yup, that's dirt. . . it is in the wash now :)

Quilting shows up much better on the back.

Just to recap, this started from Bonnie Hunter's free pattern for a scrappy bargello.  If you take a look at the quilts she shows, you will no doubt notice that mine is very different. . . . and that, my friends, is why there are so many here's up there :) I LOVE how this quilt turned out and cannot wait to sleep under it tonight!!

I spent a couple of hours hiding threads last night and this morning. . . OK, in Amanda Jean's (Crazy Mom Quilts) tutorial she suggests hiding threads as you go. . . I'm thinking this would not have been a bad idea but I was on a mission and I just wanted to get the monstrosity quilted!

Here's the down and dirty recap:

Material used was scraps from all of the batik quilts I have completed.  I did not cut into any new material for the bargello part.  I did have to order the outer border material and the backing material.

The quilting is spiral quilting inside the inside border (see Crazy Mom Quilts tutorial mentioned above) and straight lines radiating out from the inside border and spirals on the border.  I did all of the quilting (except the border) with my walking foot and I had the stitch length set at 4.5.  LOVE the bigger stitch look on quilting.

I used Superior King Tut Lapis Lazuli for the quilting.

The backing is Charcoal Quilter's Suede by P&B Textiles.  FYI, if you are looking for a nice looking, heavy weight backing - this is it! I was very impressed with this fabric.  

The finished size is 104" x 106".  The intent was for it to be about a foot bigger in both directions.... Had I done the friendship braid border and inner border in the pattern I could have easily accomplished this but I had had ENOUGH of this project and just wanted to be done! 

After all of my trials and tribulations I have to say that I might just do this quilt again - on a smaller scale!! And I might just play with different sized panels to make different patterns. . . . hmmmm, where's that scrap bin??? No seriously, I am totally kidding! For this week anyway ;)

Oh, and for those of you who have been hanging around and following my (mis)adventures, you 'might' have noticed a change in the looks of the blog.  I tried to change the font to bold in the date tab and the entire blog went black!! I clicked on view blog and seriously everything was black! SO, since I could not find the background template I had used originally, I had to pick a new one.  I'm not so happy with it but it's readable and it seems to be growing on me. . . What do you think? 

I'll be linking this post to every linky party on the planet LOL Your blog is about flying pigs and purple people eaters? Wanna see my quilt? ;) But really, linking today to Anything goes Mondays being hosted by SergerPepper.  Go check out what other peeps are working on! 

Also linking up to Linky Tuesday with Connie over at Freemotion by the River.  Head on over and see what people are working on!

And Needle and Thread Thursday with Kelly over at My Quilt Infatuation.


OK, I'm off to work on the Square in a Square quilt back.  Will have more on that tomorrow :) . . . later in the day lol

Until then, Keep on Quilting!