Schoolhouse Rock

How much did you used to love Schoolhouse Rock?! "I'm just a bill..." Ah, nostalgia.

So anyways, my commissioned quilt using some American Jane fabric at the request of the client. And if you've been reading for the past month or so, you've heard all the talk complaining about the process.

Well I'm done! Finally! Hallelujah!

Kitty: Oh look, a new toy just for me.
Me: No, Ares, move!
Kitty: I can help, promise. Watch me smooth down this batting.

I took these pictures in between work and dropping the quilt off with the client. So I was in a bit of a rush. This is getting marked as my least-favorite finish ever I think. After finishing the top I just felt creatively drained. I wasn't having fun making this, but I had to do it.

I actually like the back. I added in my absolute last scraps of the American Jane fabric [seriously Rebecca, why did you only buy 1/2 yd when it was super on sale?] and pieced it so that it didn't just look like I added a strip of the blue Oval Elements onto the side because the green wasn't wide enough. Which is the truth. But still. That's where the effort stopped on this quilt though. I wish I had done more quilting than the straight lines that you can see here. There was potential for some great quilting, but I was over it, and didn't want to have to sit on the quilt top for even another day. I wanted it done.

Yep, that's a bobble-head-esque Robert E. Lee up there. And a cannon. In the courtyard. Only in the South.

This is actually where the pictures above were taken, not that you can really tell. I was originally going to take pictures in the gardens at my work [and I still plan to do that with  my next quilt] but Thursday was so wild that I didn't even make it to my office. So these are taken at a middle school that I volunteer at Thursday afternoons. I was tickled that this quilt was made for a teacher for her reading corner and has ABC fabric in it, and the pictures are at a school. No? Not you? Well, it's the little things in life.

Do you make your significant other hold quilts up in parking lots at very busy intersections so you can get a straight-on shot of your quilt? Because I do. Do you make him leave his dinner so that you get the pictures in the last few minutes before it gets dark? Because I do that too.

That's true love, my friends.

How many pieces of American Jane fabric had to be pieced together to create a long enough strip to go the width of the quilt? I certainly don't know. But I do know that some of the pieces were only 2 inches wide, but they were all that I had left to use!

While there were no problems with puckering on the back of the quilt, I know that I didn't baste this very well because I had some drag on the front that resulted in little "puffs" near the intersections of all 4 lines. I think my goal for 2013 is to become a perfect quilt baster.

All in all, I'm glad to be done. And the person who ordered the quilt? He loved it. And so did his girlfriend. Who saw a picture of the top when she was using his phone on the evening that I happened to text him a picture of the unquilted top. We kept it a secret for about 3 months and then 2 days before delivery she found out. Ah, well...

*Linked at Finish it Up Friday!