Hello Pickles is DONE-- Yeehaw!!

Finally, a year and a half later, Hello Pickles is COMPLETED!!  Hip hip hooray!  The pattern is from sweet FeistyEily.  I am so beyond excited!  Piecing the top took a bit longer than I planned, and then I added the border at the end, so it took a bit longer then I had hoped.  Life happens- seriously!!  Does that happen to everyone else??  I am blown away by how many amazing quilts my quilty friends can make!  Either I am re.al.ly slow or I just don't put as much priority on my quilting- I hope it's the latter :).  hehe.  With my family and life obligations, quilting has to take a back seat most of the time.  I long to finish projects and make beautiful pieces, but some times, it just has to wait.  And I have had to come to a place in my mind where that's ok.  I may never be a hugely "popular" blogger, but I make things that bring joy to people, and create sunshine in their lives, and that is what quilting is all about, to me.  

 I love how the completed top looks, but the back (even though it's just one piece of fabric) really has my heart.  This quilt was made for a special boy in my family.  He surprised me by his choice of fabrics- I had expected dark, somber prints with maybe a few bright pops of color, but he blew me away with his choice of a modern, very brightly colored bundle from Sew Fresh Fabrics.  Peg and Becca had run out, but created one for me with just one substitution- it saved the day!!  One piece of fabric was this backing print- it was just a FQ though.  The boy just could not get over how awesome that print was- it had become one of my all time favorite prints, once I saw it too!!  I knew I wanted to back it in that print, but never dreamed how tricky that would prove.  Apparently the fabric had been sold out and after much crying and tons of searching, I found an amazing etsy seller that had the 6 years I needed!!  WOW!!  So there's the back, all awesome and colorful- it's called Wild Garden.  

 The background is Kona Ash- love that color!  Love how the colors around it POP!!  It's a favorite for backgrounds!

 For quilting, I chose to FMQ spirals on all the colored centered blocks and I zig zaged over the entire ash centered blocks.  I alternated the directions of the zig zags on each row.  It turned out fun!  How I wish I had a larger throat space on my machine- someday, someday.  I'm working with under 6" here, so it gets tricky.  

 The quilt is abut 100" long and over 6' wide.  I love how it looks with all the happy colors showing!

 All rolled up and ready to go to that awesome boy I know!!