Finish Report! ~~ Devon's Earth Monkeys

I *love* how this turned out!  

Finished stitching the binding on I-80 last Friday, just west of North Platte, as we drove to St. Louis to move Heather back for her senior year of college. That corn smelled SO TERRIFIC! I was fairly tempted to sneak some, but I didn't want to rob some unknown farmer. So we were good.  ;D

This is Devon's quilt top - her first, and very possibly her only. . . Oh, look! I have a photo of her on the computer from about that time, probably a year or so later.

And here she is last summer. She's gone short and dark-haired since then for fun - here's her current Facebook profile pic. I love this woman - she makes me smile!

So. . . back to her quilt. Didn't she do a delightful job of color placement? The pattern had stars that were all the same, but she wanted all 3 colors and decided herself how to do that. She was . . . 13?14 at the time. 

Way back in the summer of 2009, I decided I wanted the girls to have something to show for their summer, so I had them each piece a quilt top. Being inexperienced in teaching new quilters, I didn't know enough to limit their choices to very simple designs. This one wasn't too far of a stretch for Dev in itself, but what I *did* realize - but lost the battle in - was that she was not going to have fun at all working with the silk jacquards she insisted on buying for her quilt. Between her natural complete lack of patience and the frustrating job of working with that silk on her first project, it wouldn't surprise me if Devon never puts a quilt together again.

But aren't those silks so radiant?!  Beautiful. They made the most gorgeous quilt. She's had to wait a log time for this to get quilted, but back in 2009/10, I couldn't have done this justice. Backs are so fun to look at:

There were some minor issues with puffiness in the center - an on-point design isn't the best choice for a first quilt - so I chose dense meanders on the black spinners and dense bamboo leaves for the tan backgrounds. We wanted the silk stars to have great dimension, so I went with wool batting and did more open quilting on those. Worked like a charm for both objectives. Stars have perfect faux-trapunto dimension, and all the puffy spots successfully compressed without warping. I'm impressed with the wool's feel under the density of quilting - it's not super stiff.  :)

If you remember, I had trouble figuring out what to do for quilting the border area. The quilt seemed to hold a subtle Asian trait, so I ended up surfing Japanese motifs. The fans inside the black stop border and the pampas clamshells outside turned out to be the perfect pairing, don't you think? 

These little flowers kept popping up in sashiko surf sessions, so I used them in the corners where there was more meandering than I cared for. Love them there. (Too bad the photo flipped upside down. . .)

The monkeys seriously amuse me. This guy below is just on top of the world now that the quilt is finished, washed, and blocked.  :D

And this fella cares not a whit that he's got to carry the whole world. . . 

And check out this fun duo!

Haha!  I just realized - she can have monkeys jumping on her bed. . . 

(I think I need some sleep)

I'll be linking up at some finish parties, so grab a banana and a drink and have a great break surfing through the celebrations.  :D

~*~*~*~

Linking up at

TGIFF hosted by Pippa this week

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday