Quilt 69: Windows of Aussie Animals - DONE!

I wanted to do a quilt using Australian animals as the theme - a gift for a friend I'm going to be visiting soon.  I found a lovely print which has lots of different animals - echidnas, kangaroos, galahs, wombats, crocodiles, koalas, platypus, emus, possoms, and so on.  Just couldn't resist it.  But how to use it in a quilt? 

I decided "3-d windows" would work well, as long as I cut the fabric in a way that the windows would show different groupings of animals.  Doing that was a bit challenging, but I managed it. 

Here it is on the longarm (below).  It's the largest quilt I've done on the longarm to-date.

Here's a closeup of one of the windows, showing the animals.

Last year I got several meters of a gum-tree print - and used that as one of the borders.  Cutting along the selvage, I was able to get a single border strip without having any seams interrupting the flow of the branches:

Below is the backing, showing the "blustery breeze" stitch pattern.  And, as you can see from the photo above and below, I bound the quilt with the gum tree print.

I added some triangles to the corners for a little extra visual interest, and also to break between the bottom and side "gum tree" borders.

And here it is finished:

52" x 76" - polyester batting - quilted on the longarm ("blustery breeze" groovy board)

Hubby Stephen had to really stretch to hold this one up!