Paint the Rainbow (Quilt)

Guys - isn't it pretty??  I've finished up another quilt that I wanted to share with you.  Actually, it's been finished for some time now, but I wanted to get it mailed off to the newest little baby in my life before posting pictures of it here. This quilt is called Paint the Rainbow.  The pattern is called Confectionery and from this book.  I started this quilt back in January after finding out that one of my very best friends, Kristina, was pregnant with their second.  I didn't KNOW she was having a girl when I picked the fabric, so it was a bit of a risk to go with so much pink/purple...but I was hoping I'd be right.

Baby Brianna was 5 weeks early and is the first baby to beat me to the finish line....I blame her early arrival.  Despite the fact that this pattern came from a book called "Easy Weekend Quilts", it took me MUCH longer than one weekend to finish this one.  I think it would be more accurate to say that you could finish the TOP of this quilt, in 1 weekend, IF (!) you had all the fabric pre-cut.  The assembly of the top was really quite easy.  But, quilting is so much more than just that top piece.

I choose a VERY tight loopy quilting.  It created beautiful texture and the quilt is ever so soft because of it, but, it took me for.ev.er to quilt this puppy.  Like, think 15-20 hours of little tiny loops, over and over and over again.  Luckily, I choose this super fun variegated thread so even the this long process stayed fun!

Don't you just love the backing for this quilt?  It's perfectly girly.  It's called Glee by Tamara Kate for Michael Miller and I knew I needed it for this quilt as soon as I saw it.  For the front I used a fat quarter Rainbow blender pack and starting this quilt in the dead of one of the coldest winters we've ever seen was just what I needed.  I purchased the backing and fat quarters from one of my favorite modern quilting sites called Stash Modern Fabric.  It measures about 60x60.

I bound it with this pretty pink fabric I had on hand: Canyon Stripe in Pink by Michele D'Amore for Bernatex.  I think it was just the girly punch this quilt needed.

I'm still working on perfecting my machine binding.  I think I might need to do a few mini-quilts for decoration in my sewing room to practice before binding my next big quilt.

This quilt is so bright and happy and I'm so pleased with how it came out.  A friend asked me how long I thought this took me to make, start to finish, and I'd estimate somewhere in the 75 hour range.  For anyone that's never tried making something from scratch that number seems INSANE.  Well, lets be honest, that IS insane.  But, I love doing it and my greatest hope is that this quilt will be filled with grass stains, ice cream drips and dirt because that means someone loves it!!