This is not my most glorious finish.

A ringing endorsement to start off this post, amiright? But it's true. This is not my most glorious finish. But it's a finish nonetheless, one that I am thrilled to remove from the queue, and one that has been plagued with frequent pauses throughout its creation.

Last fall, my son asked me to make him a quilt. He has one me-made quilt, an i-spy patchwork affair that I made very early in my quilting career. (I think it was finish #5?) But Banzo is growing up, and it was getting a little too small for him, so he asked if he could give it to his baby brother and have a new quilt for himself. How could I say no? He wanted trucks, and I pulled truck fabric and rainbow blenders, then axed the trucks because the pile sat on my table for weeks without inspiration. Axing the trucks was necessary, even if the only truck will be a label on the back of the quilt.

I FMQ'd the entire thing in a pointy meander, mostly as practice for my nephew's hedgehog quilt. This is the first quilt that I've ever used an all over FMQ style for, and I did not enjoy it. It took forever. It used up a ton of thread. I started with a partially full spool of green thread for the backing thread, thinking, that will be plenty for the bottom bobbin. Nope. I ran out. I could have waited until I made it to the store, but there was no way that was happening, so I switched to blue thread and kept going because apparently I only like to keep one spool of green thread in my house at a time. I probably should have waited. I had to switch to blue thread in the green section on top too, which is horribly noticeable, but I thought if I stopped working on this quilt, when would I get around to it again? (I'm not sure if I will actually use this pattern for my nephew's quilt. The jury is still out. I will say this quilt has a very nice feel to it and my skillz definitely improved.)

I backed it in a green flannel with bits of other flannel scraps to bring it up to size. For binding, I had hoped to use kona black, but I was completely out of black solids--I apparently need to have an epic shopping trip to the LQS--but I did manage to find this black pin dot in my stash. And I had just enough! Except, I cut one strip at 2" instead of 2.25". SERIOUSLY. I almost threw in the towel then and there, but I pulled out my binding scraps, grabbed a handful that would work, and stitched them up. The final product is a non-matching binding with non-matching quilt thread with no trucks, but the quilt is done. You better believe I machine-sewed that binding because I wanted to get this quilt done.

What went wrong with this quilt? Should I have picked another pattern? Gone bolder? I still really love the improv-y quilt I made for my middle son. What made this one go flat? There may not be answers to those questions, but I do know that Banzo loves his new quilt. He loved watching me work on it. He snuggled it the other day in 90 degree weather. Whether or not I've created an epic quilt here, it will be loved, and that's the part on which I'm choosing to focus.

This is finish #6 of 14 from my Q2 FAL list. In April, I had an incomplete stack of blocks, so this one really did come quite a ways.