Family quilt - finished

Six months after I gave this quilt as a Christmas present, I finally finished it.  I'm blaming the baby...I was really happy to get the top and back pieced by Christmas, but after that my energy and caring plummeted.  They came back though, so I got it done!


Here's the top.  I got the inspiration for the layout from Gemma @ Pretty Bobbins.  You'll notice there are two blank spots...those for for pictures of the expanding family.  (At Christmas I put an ultrasound picture in one of the spots...it was how we announced the baby to that family. :D)

My son really liked this quilt because he recognized people on it.  We spent quite a bit of time naming everyone.  Here he is pointing to one of his pictures.

The back.  Cars, motorcycles, and flames.  (And some solids because I didn't calculate yardage correctly.)

I also didn't get enough of the inside backing fabric, and so made an emergency run to my LQS to see what I could find.  We found something that matched pretty well, but not quite as well as I wanted.  So I did spirals in the outside border to make it match the inside fabric design and tie everything together.  The inside background got squares and rectangles.  I did not quilt over the pictures, but I did stitch-in-the-ditch for a few of the larger ones.

I ended up using Spoonflower for printing the pictures because we don't have an inkjet.  So far I've been very happy with that choice!  The pictures were a bit dark, but not so much that one would notice.  I washed the quilt once without detergent and the pictures still looked good.  

My son thinks he should always get a turn with the camera, so here I am trying to pick off the white cotton fuzzies that got on the quilt while taking pictures.  They're everywhere!!