Go Broncos

As the second youngest of 7 children, I have nieces and nephews, and great nieces and nephews, that are older than one might expect for someone my age. My oldest nephew just turned 50, and a great nephew, Jordon, just graduated from university - Western Michigan University. I hate to admit it, but I actually started this quilt for him when he graduated from high school. It's just taken me this long to get around to finishing it. I don't even remember how I found this pattern, but it's an Alphabet Soup Quilt pattern from AD Designs. WMU's school colours are brown and gold - hence the colours in the letters and borders. The pattern calls for tan and light brown as the background colours, but I decided to make it orange and blue - Jordon's favourite colours.
I might have mentioned before that I seldom pay full price for fabric. However, I occasionally make an exception, like when it's a novelty print that's not readily available. That was the case in the backing fabric I used for this quilt.

It's certainly not fabric I would even find in Canada. Unfortunately, the print runs edge to edge and so I had to do a vertical seam to keep it upright on the quilt, since the quilt top is also directional. I managed the vertical seam on my longarm without any problems.

Meanwhile, I had to choose a quilting design. I considered various ideas, but finally settled on Wild Horses Grande to coordinate with WMU's school team, the Broncos.

This is an Urban Elementz pantograph by Deb Geissler. I'm a big fan of novelty pantographs and I love how this one turned out. I used a Wonderfil Fabulux thread for the first time. This is the Ocean Breeze colour way and it's really pretty, with Glide Mocha on the back. Still having some challenges with my Amara, however. 
Did you ever think about how much thread we throw away when longarming, especially when we're having problems with our machines? Well, I found this idea when looking for what to do with yarn ends, and decided to try it with thread as well. 

I bought these baubles at Walmart a few years ago in the Boxing Day sales. My grandson and I have made several different projects with them, but I still have quite a few left over. My goal is to decorate a Christmas tree with craft-related items: old thread spools, maybe some crochet hooks and knitting needles. And now I have these to add.
But back to my quilt: Once the binding was done, I sat down in my recliner to tack down the label and trim any loose threads from around the binding. I was giving it a final look over, when Mystery decided he needed to test it.

Cat-tested and approved, and ready for mailing. As soon as I find the right size box.