Time for the Quilt Blogger's Festival

It's time again for the  Quilt blogger's Festival.  I love all the inspiration that comes from the participants of this festival.  I have gotten some seriously great ideas from looking at some of the entries.  So for this go round, here is my submission:

 I started this quilt last summer as part of Amanda Jean's 36 Patch QAL.  No this was long before Sunday Morning Quilts came out.  I had been reading her blog for about 6 months or so and just loved her style.  I had never don a QAL, so I was anxious to try one and see what it was like.

 I started pulling out scraps an small bits to find pairs for each block.  Now I am a sort of matchy matchy girl when it comes to fabric for my quilts, but with this, I kinda let go a bit.  I selected to fabrics for each 36 patch square, without regard for how it would look with the other squares.  I worked hard to stay caught up, but still fell behind.

 I finally finished the squares last fall I think.  Then I finally came up with the layout and sewed them all together.  I was surprised to find out how much I liked it.  Then, another stumble...how to back it?  By now it was spring.  I wanted to keep the scrappy theme, so I took all the leftover strips from the front and started piecing the back.  About half way through, I realized the "huge pile" was smaller than I thought.  So I stopped again.

 Then one day, I just grabbed the half done back and added a few larger pieces of fabric that had been sitting in my stash, some for years.  The back was done.  Then I folded it all up and it sat some more.

 This summer, I finally bought some batting.  I had been on a "sew only from the stash" diet almost all summer, and that included batting for awhile as well.  I didn't have nearly enough scraps of batting for this baby.

 It took me several sessions at my machine to get it done.  I love each block for itself and I even love the whole thing together now.  It took some getting used to, I must admit.

                 She looks good in the autumn sunshine, doesn't she?

With all that color, I decided to use black and white for the binding.  I had a jelly roll of Summersville and I pulled all the black and white out.  I love the way it finished off this beauty.

Now the stats:
Quilt measurement is 70" x 70"
Quilted by me on my Bernina
Category-Favorite Scrap Quilt or Favorite Throw Quilt
Number 38
Now off to see everyone else's quilts!!