scrap vortex

Welcome to finish it up Friday!

On Wednesday I finished my scrap vortex quilt (!!!!) and I have about 95 photos to prove it. Don't worry, I won't share them all here, as tempting as that may be!

This quilt is MASSIVE, measuring about 105" x 95". When I made the top, one side measured 94" long and the other side was 95" long. After quilting, I'm pleased to report that it's nearly square (or rectangular). Amazing.

For the back, I picked several fabrics from my stash and pieced 10.5" squares together. There are 110 squares, with 107 unique fabrics. How's that for stash busting? It felt GREAT to cut into that much fabric at once. Folding the fabric afterwards was a different story.

The binding is scrappy, which is like icing on the cake. There are so many details to look at. It's SO FUN!

For the quilting, Cheryl suggested that I do one big spiral, to go with the name scrap vortex. We discussed how much work that would be, to which she responded, "that's what a long-armer is for." I prefer to quilt my own quilts, but with the ridiculous notion planted in my head, I knew I must try it. I had a plan B AND a plan C in mind if the spiral didn't pan out. Well, it took about 4 tries to get the center circle just right, but perseverance paid off. I quilted it in the span of 9 days, with 2 days off. Some days I quilted for 8 hours or more. But it was totally worth it!

When trying to find the center of the quilt, I discovered that this dot was within 1" of the center, so I centered the spiral around it. It would have been silly NOT to! I free motion quilted the center on my Juki, then I switched over to my Janome and used the walking foot for the remainder of the quilt. I used the edge of my walking foot as a guide, and the lines are about 1/2" apart. Yes, I turned this around in my machine about one million times. My back is a little worse for wear, if you could imagine!

With the pieced back, the sheer size, and the spiral quilting, I am shocked (and thrilled) that there is not a single pucker...back or front. There was very little pulling/drag...even though the last side I basted I was running quite low on pins. What a relief!

There are so many cute prints in this quilt...

pinwheels,

paper boats, LOTS of polka dots,

 little red riding hood,

 cute Japanese fabric,

 smiling submarines!

 egg beaters, cupid, rolling pins, apples, oh my!

 even cloths pin people,

little sheep!, vintage feed sack from my grandmother,

and even toilet paper! (that part is on my husband's side of the bed. ha!)

As soon as I finished the binding, I made a label and stitched it on, so this quilt is TRULY done, done, DONE! I'm so thankful that I blogged when I started the quilt, so I have a record of how long it took. I had no idea it would morph into this scrap masterpiece, but I'm delighted that it did.

It looks pretty dandy on my bed, doesn't it?

This is scrap project #28/101.

Now, finally, it's your turn! Please link up your finishes for the week! Thanks for joining me for finish it up Friday!