Groovy Guitars - Finished at Last!

This has to be my biggest quilt finish of the year! Not in terms of size but in sheer weight off my shoulders. I’ve been struggling with this beast quilt for my dear husband Bruce for over a year. It’s been in Time Out, it’s been cussed at, it has narrowly escaped being butchered with shears, and I’m sure there is plenty of blood, sweat and tears in there, too. But this afternoon I finished sewing on the binding - by machine, because the sooner it was done, the better - and I will never have to labor over it again. Hallelujah!

Am I pleased with how it turned out? Well, yeah, I am. For the most part. The picture above was snapped just awhile ago in the shade of our backyard apricot tree. Please excuse the dappled sunlight that shows.....  Groovy Guitars finished at 52” x 69”.

Here is the back.

I used batiks for all the bright colors - the colors that were picked, along with the black background, by Bruce. He loves bright and he LOVES red.  I enlarged the pattern to make the two guitars on the ends complete. I also completed the bottoms of the guitars and the head stocks so that the entire group floats rather than being cut off at the borders. Cutting all the interlocking pieces (and working in reverse, with extra additions) was a challenge for my brain. Once that was done, the worst was over. It’s just that after that, I didn’t even want to look at it for awhile. 

I am a mediocre quilter at best, but I did do some different things on this quilt. All the black background areas were stippled with black thread.  The large orange guitar with the circle-print orange batik fabric got quilted swirls. I’m not very even or proficient with them, but no one is going to sue me over it, LOL. The guitar necks were all given straight line treatment to mimic guitar strings.

This yellow electric guitar body got some angular quilting.

The head stocks mostly got quilted with echoing lines. The rest of the pieces here and there were treated with straight lines, swirls or stipples.

After the outside photo session, we came in and I threw the quilt in the washer with 2 color catchers. We may get more pictures after it is washed.  Bruce loves the quilt! And I love that it’s done. finished. gone. over. completed.

This is my OMG - One Monthly Goal for August. I linking up to Patty’s August goal completion linkup for OMG HERE. This also checks off my Goal #8 for the Quarter 3 Finish-Along, which I blogged about HERE.  I’m also linking up to Sarah’s Whoop Whoop Friday, because I really am happy dancing over this finish!

Now I can put the pedal to the medal and finish up the next 4-5 quilts in line. They should be a breeze after this one!

By the way, Blogger has been acting up again - has anyone else been having problems? I missed several days of comments from Saturday the 11th through yesterday, the 15th. I reset everything once again and it seems to be working again. For now. However, there are several people who commented over my last few posts (Pets on Quilts, Africa Final post and Orange Saturday at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge) that I cannot respond to as I don’t have your email addresses. Please accept my thanks for commenting and apologies for not responding personally.