African Fabrics

What seems like ages ago, I picked up fabric while on a trip to Africa (I'm sure I blogged about it at some point, but I'm too lazy to go look for the post and link to it) and I've had it in several stages of U.F.O. over the last six to eight months.

Here is a quick shot of all the fabrics.  They aren't the best quality fabrics, but I did pick them up while traveling abroad, so I was going to make a quilt out of them no matter the quality.

Because I wasn't too pleased with the quality of the fabric, I decided to use a foundation of muslin to build the block on. 

Since the fabrics are big and bold, I also wanted to make really big blocks to ensure the fabric could be seen.  The foundation was cut around 31 x 31 inches to make sure I had enough room to highlight this great fabric.

I did do some smaller piecing, but just a small bit.  The black fabric was from my stash, but that was the only top fabric that didn't come from my trip.

Here is one of the many blocks trimmed and ready to be sewn to the rest.

I told you those blocks were big.  A total of six blocks were used to make this quilt.  I'll have to measure it, but just know that it will fit the bed it was designed for.  

Bright colors and bold prints really jump.  This quilt was almost too big for the long-arm, so I did not add a border.  The binding will be the only little spot of different fabric.

I couldn't really decide on how I should quilt this monster quilt.  I ended up using a simple meander for the majority of the surface.  

When I got to the small black strips, I couldn't resist adding in a somewhat messy swirl.  Again, I used Superior Thread's King-Tut to long-arm quilt this quilt.

I resisted quilting over the women on the red/white print.  I didn't want to muddy her shape if possible.  The backing was pieced with about five yards of batik in dark brown and yellow and a kind of rust and yellow.  All that's left is to finish the binding and label.