Maisy is on the bed - Another Festival entry

Yesterday I finished my daughter's Maisy quilt. I only had a little length of binding to sew by hand to have it all done. So because we stayed over, I thought it would be great to enjoy the warmth of a quilt after lunch, while the weather was awful outside. The binding didn't take long. But the "tidy up" afterwards took forever. I had lots and lots of thread tails to finish off for the quilt and it seems to have taken me hours to do just that. But at least, it was on Miss Strawberry Shortcake's bed last night! So this one less UFO and one OPAM (and a big one) this month. It also means that I have completed my Lazy Bums challenge for October, how nice!

While I was finishing the quilt, I thought I could enter this one too in the Blogger's Quilt Festival organised by Amy, 2 quilts in one festival, that's so unlike me!

So just a little bit about the quilt if you are here via the festival and don't already know the story!
I bought a Maisy panel a while ago and thought it would be fun to make a quilt for my young daughter who was learning the numbers. So back in the Spring of 2012 (when my daughter was just 3), I send a pack of fabric and a "Maisy" picture to each of my fellow bees in Bee Europa, asking them to frame the picture in green and make the block to a 12.5' square.

They also each made a Star Irish Chain.

 I received fantastic blocks from all lie these ones

that I put together into a quilt top over the summer.

and with borders

I was hoping to get the quilt quilted on my frame last year but because of the extensive building works we were doing on the house, the frame had to be packed away and so did the quilt top. And it is only a few weeks back that I finally got the quilt top out of the plastic bag. This month, I asked  DH to put my frame back together so that I could finally have a go. Of course because I hadn't used it for 2 years, it wasn't plain sailing straight away (far from actually and there were tears, more here if you are interested)

 but I finally got there and quilted the top over a couple of evenings.

I used an Aurifil green thread on the top and an Aurifil white thread on the backing and I must say despite the difference in colour, it worked really well, no green on the back or white on the front.

Last week-end, I added the binding on the front. And this week, I slowly finished sewing it on the back by hand.

Et voila, a new quilt for Miss Strawberry Shortcake, one year in the making. And one less UFO too!

Quilt stats:
measurement: 60' x 78'
fabric: Maisy by Andover, green background by Makower and an assortment of other prints
thread: pieced with Guterman, quilted with Aurifilspecial technique: free motion quilting on my frame - going further than simple stippling
machine quilted by myself of course!
made between April 2012 and October 2013
time to completion: about 18 months
particularity: bee group quilt

Also linking to Whoop Whoop Friday.
Celine