A Big UFO Finish!

After 8 years I've finished my queen size Trip Around the World quilt that I started in 2006.  It started with 24 fabrics, if I remember correctly.  This quilt is done in sections.  You sew one strip of each color together into a strata.  Then you "tube" it.  You carefully lay the tube out keeping all the rows even.  Then you slice up the tube into 24 sections.  Once you decide where you want to start the pattern, you separate the two fabrics and start to lay it out.  Each slice gets the next fabric down (or up for that matter) separated from the next one.  Eventually you have 24 slices that makes up one of the quadrants.  Each row is offset by one square. Repeat at least 4 times, one for each quadrant.  I actually made extra rows so my quilt is not square.  Add a border, quilt, bind and you're done.

Some interesting statistics on this quilt.  There are 2,793 2" squares in the center.  There are 177,600 stitches in the quilting. (There may be more as sometimes the computer said there were 11,840 stitches per row and sometimes it said 12,305.  I used the lower one.)   If the stitches in a row were stretched out into a straight line it would be 1,165" long.  I find these info bites pretty interesting.

I had hoped to show the quilting close up with this picture. You can click on any picture to see a larger picture.  And here's the back.  (Hum, it seems to have a bit of fullness in it.  Definitely not noticeable on the bed.) 

I used a Pellon 100% Cotton batt.  It is definitely not as heavy as the Warm and Natural 100% cotton. It may mean we'll throw a blanket on the bed during the dead of winter.  But it will be much easier to move the quilt around too.  After the photo session I put it on the bed.  It looks good except now I need to make some pillow shams.  The plain pillow cases in beige don't look good.  The blue and yellow ones look worse.  We'll need to get some new art to put over the bed because the blue and red flower just doesn't look good anymore. Oh well.  

Here's the quilt with the binding almost finished. Pat and I agreed that I should do both sides of the binding by machine.  I am a slow hand stitcher when it comes to binding and I'm decent doing the second side of the binding by machine   I was able to put 382" of binding on in a couple of hours by machine while it would have taken me days to sew it down by hand.  

And now I can make a big √on my UFO list.  I am making steady progress on my UFOs.  Yikes, I just looked at my list.  I think this is the 8th UFO I've finished this year.  WOW.  I started the year with 55 UFO's.  Three of the quilts I finished were actually listed as 1 item.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Now to decide what UFO to work on next.  Actually, I cut out a new baby quilt today to donate to the NICU at a local hospital. 

I'm linking up with TGIFF at Quokka Quilts and Can I get a Whoop Whoop?

Happy Quilting All!