Quilt 37: Hawaiian Tsunami - DONE!

This has to be the fastest quilt I've made. Or maybe not. It was fast in some ways, slow in others - and with this one... a minor disaster at the start of the quilting stage.

Here I've nearly finished mounting the backing.

Happily, my friend Anna agreed that the "tsunami swirls" print would be good for the backing.

 Now the batting and the top:

Notice how close the batting is to the backing.

 We wanted the finished quilt to pretty much be the width of the backing - see how close I am?

That's CLOSE!  I was going to have to move the side clamps around
when I got to the edges.

Then disaster struck.  This was the quilt I was working on when the bobbin winder broke down. I had a freshly-wound bobbin in - was quilting away, and when it came time to advance the quilt, I realized the tension was bad. I had to pick out about 15 feet of stitching!

And that's not the worst of it - look at the marks it left!

You know I was just about sick when I saw this.

As it turns out, the fabric isn't actually dyed - it's more like a silkscreen print.  It washes up just fine, but oh, once you pierce it with a needle, the mark is there and isn't going away.

I left the quilt on the frame that week when the bobbin winder was being repaired.  I hoped to be able to position the groovy boards exactly where they had been, but frankly found it impossible.

Yup - it's always going to show.

Fortunately, it's only in the white area that you see the stitch marks - and there's only about an 18" square area where this is happening.  Once the quilt was done and I turned it over, I realized that it doesn't really show that much unless you look closely.

It's still gorgeous - and if you don't look too closely, you don't see the marks.

So there it is - all ready to bind.  I bound it with the green shamrock print, which goes well with both the front and back. Unfortunately, I neglected to take a photo of it after I finished it!  Oh well, just use your imagination.... 

The colours really are stunning.

Other than the mishap with the bobbin (and the unpicking), this was a very fun quilt to make. And Anna's thrilled with it.  Because I goofed and didn't get good pictures of the finished quilt, I asked her to take some for me. The photos below are hers - I think she had a good time arranging it for the camera.  :-)