Faith and Freedom; finally, a finished top!

I'm not sure I have ever been quite so relieved to have a completed quilt top.

I started starching the fabrics for this one on January 25th

and besides a few bags,

and a couple of garments,

Faith and Freedom has occupied all available sewing time.

Faith and Freedom will likely be the only commission project

I get to do this year;

building a house doesn't leave much time for, well, anything,

so I am very grateful I've had the opportunity to make it,

and that I'll be able to give three (!) sewing machines for my efforts.

This quilt represents so many things,

which I'll cover in another post,

but the biggest design considerations were

 that the recipient's faith be portrayed,

that it include their favorite colors,

that freedom be well represented,

and that it not be 'modern'.

(I can't wait to share more about my client and the recipients!)

I designed Faith and Freedom with my usual graph paper, ruler, pencil and big eraser,

using the Milky Way pattern by Fig Tree for the fireworks/stars.

The pattern called for only 2 sizes of star blocks, but as you can see,

I went with a few more than that ;-)

After I'd made 2/3 of the firework blocks,

I made a copy of my design

and colored it in,

so I could figure out what colors I needed

in which block sizes

and where they should go.

I'd pinned the Milky Way quilt about a year ago

(according to Pinterest - I would have guessed it was more like 2 or 3 years)

but knowing that I would likely never actually take a quilt anywhere

 on Independence Day,

and therefore didn't really need one of my own,

I figured the next best thing,

was to make one (similar) for someone else.

Y'all.

I am here to tell you,

if this weren't a commission quilt,

I'd have quit a long time ago.

So many bias edges!

(and I obviously can't read a pattern,

because I ended up with octagons, 

which required triangles at the corners.

What the heck?!

It was a happy accident though, 

because I was able to have smaller (and more) pieces anyways,

which contributed to the overall scrappiness of the quilt.)

(there are 121 different fabrics!)

I think I need to move that filler block to the left side of the blue and green star
instead of the right. darn it! 

Each block took longer than I anticipated

 - no surprise there -

but I (eventually) discovered that if I worked on 2 blocks at a time,

my time spent per block was greatly reduced.

Even so, I've already exceeded my total time investment estimate

(by 25 hrs!)

and I still have to prepare the back,

quilt,

and bind it.

(Fortunately for my client,

I quoted a flat price ;-)

Speaking of  quilting -

I'm still not entirely sure how to quilt the church,
beyond thread-painting doors and windows.

Any ideas??

linking up this satisfying finish with the scraptastic Amanda Jean