The EPIC Beatles quilt that was only 2 years late.

As soon as I saw this line of Beatles fabric, I KNEW I had to make a quilt for my sister. Even though she's in her early 20's she has a very serious case of Beatle-mania. She even went to England for a summer to take classes about them!

It took me ages to find the fabric. I had people hunting all over! I was able to score some from another Craftster at the end of 2008. Finally it showed up on equilter and I purchased what I thought was enough to make a twin size quilt in April of 2009. Apparently I had promised to have it done as her graduation gift if May of 2009. Yeea... about that.... At this point it became a Christmas of 2009 gift.

At the end of August 09 I had my squares together and elicited sister's help in placing them. This is where I figured out I really had no idea how much fabric I was ordering. I had to fight for every little square and wasn't able to put things together in the way I really would've liked. My sister and I both love symmetry and pattern and I just had to throw that out and make do with what I could, much to her chagrin. The pieced side is not how I intended it but I worked it out the best I could. You can also see in the first picture that there are only two squares at the bottom of the "All you need is love" panel. I had originally intended for there to be two other squares at the top but due to my fabric snafu, the pieced side was only big enough to have them at the bottom. Undecided

Once we decided on the final placement of the squares I sewed together the "top" which in the final quilt I really consider the bottom! At this point I was thinking about how exactly I should quilt it and it just seemed wrong to go over all those crazy squiggles with my own additional crazy squiggles. So what did that mean? Oh yea, hand quilting. Using the "All you need is love" panel as my guide (and using my grandfather's grandmother's quilting hoop!), I hand quilted around most of the squiggles on the bottom, around Jeremy, around all of the Beatles, around the blue meanie, around the words. I used less than a full spool of a Sulky variegated thread. It was perfect! Similar colors and the variegation really lends itself to the psychedelic theme of the panel. I hand quilted and hand quilted and hand quilted. Christmas 2009? Missed it by a long shot. It sat in the hoop until just a week ago.

Once I finally decided that I could hand quilt no more, I machine stitched up the sides and around a few places in the bottom panels. I used bias tape as my binding and I LOVED it. It is infinitely better than my previous quilt binding attempts, even if it isn't 100%. I used this tutorial except I used the bias tape. Again, not enough fabric to make my own!

I'm so excited to have this finished! It is the single biggest/most labor intensive thing I've ever done. In typical sister fashion, she opened it and said "Oh, only 2 years late." Roll Eyes