Blue and orange quilt finished! - 2014 finish #3

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I was working on a blue and orange quilt for a friend who is a big Syracuse fan. It is finally done! This is finish #3 for 2014 (blogged). I have two more finished except for burying threads, and will post those very soon.

I was inspired by the bento box patterns I've seen around the internet, but I modified it by varying the width of the strips. I love the movement it gives to the quilt.

I quilted this with a squared meander. I was having a heck of a time quilting - my thread kept breaking and I was cursing my machine. I finally got through it after changing my needle, rethreading, etc. Then I started quilting another and the same thing happened--so I changed my needle again to a larger size and it was all better. The quilting could have been much nicer if I had thought to do that earlier, but I'm not going back.

I am giving this to my friend tomorrow night - he and his wife moved to the DC area about a year or so ago and we haven't seen each other yet. We all became internet friends more than 10 years ago on a Usenet newsgroup, and met in person a few times. I lost touch with them but found them again through facebook. I'm excited to see them, and hope they like the quilt and the thought behind it.

Front of quilt - they are about 15.5 inch blocks, so it's 46.5 x 62 or so.

Closeup

Backing- I love these giant polka dots by Marrimekko.
The Crate and Barrel outlet usually carries multiple colors.

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