the full monty

Enough teaser photos, already! My Scrap Hoover is finally bound and photographed! This quilt is my biggest and most proud finish yet so please bear with me during this heavily-pictured post. And as a side note, if you've never seen the film The Full Monty, you should. Anyways, back to the quilt.

I started this way back when sometime last year after I received my copy of Material Obsession 2. I fell hard straight away for Sarah Fielke's pattern Maple Leaf Rag and knew it would be mandatory for  my overflowing scrap bucket.

This was a very long-term project, but the piecing was so much fun it kept it interesting. Every time I worked on it I loved digging up new combinations. It's essentially a spiderweb pattern with crazy-pieced background pieces as opposed to the usual solid negative space. The beauty of this is that you can use every tiny, weirdly shaped scrap in your bin. Something about finding a home for trash-bin worthy miniscule scrap of a favorite fabric was quite thrilling.

Lucy approves of the quilt too.

I will say that the piecing of this top is most imperfect, but adds to the charm I think. Lots of bulky seams made accuracy difficult so I just had to squelch my inner perfectionist on this one.

The most special thing about this quilt for me is that it has because it's a made from all scraps of previous projects it has become a journal of everything I've done up to this point in my sewing career. I love seeing the bits and bobs left over from Lucy and Olivia's baby quilts, or a small piece of a fabric I no longer have in my stash.

The backing is one of my favorite prints from Anna Maria Horner's Loulouthi line called Summer Totem. And that drop-dead gorgeous quilting? I can't take credit for that. This was done by none other than the fabulously-talented Angela Walters. Angela's work is even more stunning in person and makes me aspire to be a better FMQer.

Finally the weather has cooled down enough so I could finish hand-sewing the binding down. This is another AMH print I'd been hoarding from her Chocolate Lollipop range.

So that's it! I hope this quilt will become a family heirloom to be loved by my children and grand-children. 

I hope you all are enjoying these last few days of summer. I'm a little excited for fall and all of the wool sweaters and cozy quilts that come with it :)