A little piece of Africa...

Today I got to mark another quilt off my WIP list. I'm pretty excited about it for a couple reasons. One, It's a sentimental quilt, and two, it's the biggest quilt I've done completely on my own machine. Yay for accomplishment and progress!

This is supposed to be a birthday/Christmas gift for my little brother who'll be turning 26 (gulp!) in November but since he lives in a place that has moderate winters, I figured I'd send it to him early so he can use it as the weather starts to change. I am absolutely in love with this quilt. Back when I was a preteen I talked about serving a mission for my church. I had big dreams of getting a call to Africa and serving in remote villages surrounded by wildlife. Of course that didn't happen. I actually fell in love with the man of my dreams my third year of college and married him in the LDS Oakland Temple. Since I'm 2 years older than my brother, this happened all before my brother decided to turn in his papers. Guess where he got called to? Africa. Johannesburg South Africa to be exact. I was a little jealous, not of the specific country, but that he got called to the place I had always wanted to go (not South Africa specifically, but Africa in general).

While there he received the designed piece of fabric from a family that he visited. Now, this quilt is a small twin finished. So you can imagine how little that panel was to begin with. My mom wanted to make this quilt. She bought a few yards of striped flannel from Joann's that matched almost perfectly, and the orignal plan was to cut batting to the same size, sew around the perimeter leaving an opening for turning, and then top stitch the perimeter and sew along the curves on either side of the circles to hold the batting in place. That remained the plan for the past 3 years until I told my mom to send it to me so I can get it done. Once I got it, I realized that the original plan was great and all, but my brother is 6 foot 4 inches. He wouldn't have been able to cover his legs with the thing. So I hit up my local quilt shop during a weekend sale and got the orange fabric which is Timeless Treasures, and the zebra print (unknown) for the back. I figured it was fitting for an African quilt. I am in LOVE with this quilt. I LOVE the colors even though they aren't really me and I went a little crazy on the quilting. I did some lotus flowers in the circles and then followed the scallops with different designs. Some are basic lines, some are vined hearts, some squigglies, and some zig-zag. The orange is covered in large stippling. The panel is voile I think. It's really soft, but was a little touchy to work with. It frays like crazy, and moves a lot! It would also get those little clumps of excess hairs after moving it around so much with my quilting gloves. Kind of like what happens to a bathing suit if you rub velcro over it. Oh, and please excuse my son's messy room. His bed is the only twin in the house, so I use it often to compare my quilts to a twin size bed.