Giraffes, Elephants and Hippos are finished!

Thanks for this finish has to go to Project Quilting!  This weeks challenge was to finish a UFO - the hardest thing about that for me, was deciding which one.  Since this was the quilt I intended to finish for my UFO challenge in December and I did not get it done, I thought it was a good idea to work on it.

The first thing I had to do was to piece my back.  I had a nice chunk left from the original yardage of the fabric in the borders (Michael Miller's Zoology in black) that I wanted to use, plus another largish size orange stripe that I thought would work, plus a strip of the fabric I used in the narrow borders.  Since the Zoology piece wasn't quite long enough I cut it in two pieces and inserted the strip of the border fabric.

Since the stripe was about 27 inches by the width of fabric I cut it in half and sewed the two pieces together to make a large enough piece to add to the side of this.  It was the perfect size at that point for the back!

At this point I had to dig through my batting box, and ended up having to piece this as well!  I was glad I found a strip that was just big enough to add to the piece that was not quite large enough.  I got the layers pinned andstarted quilting.  I though t about using a fun lime green thread, but ended up going with the slate gray, and think that it was a great choice!  I just quilted this in a large meander since I just wanted to get it finished up.  I think part of the reason this has been a UFO for so long is the fact that I just could not figure out how I wanted to quilt it.  The allover design looks just fine on it!

 It was a rainy day today, so a bit hard to get the right lighting....

 When I finished the quilting I realized I had managed to get the backing on upside down.  Whoops!

 Here is a close-up so you can see how all the animals are blanket stitched down.  They were fused first with fusible web.

Hurray for a finished UFO...A month and a week late, but I got it done!  I am still working on my November quilt (hand-quilting), and it should be finished up as well before long.   Still thinking about my goal for this year, but I have something in mind.  

This quilt is available in my Etsy Shop - here!