(sort of) crazy quilt

I figured I'd better get this in-progress post up now before I show you the finished project! This is the "(sort of) crazy quilt" from the book Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, which I know I've mentioned before. This center "focus" panel is roughly 27" square, so a bit bigger than the one featured in the book. It was fun to put together, but did take a bit of time. My main issue with it is that it's very "seam-y". Especially because I used Kona cottons, which are nice and thick. I had a tough time getting it all to lay flat for the quilt sandwich. 

I wanted to keep this project simple, but I also wanted it to be fairly big. So I framed it with a nice Kona white and bordered it with a lovely Kona gray to get it up to baby quilt size--around 45" x 60". It's for my friend Jeff and his wife-to-be as a wedding gift, so I'm hoping they'll use it as a lap quilt instead. That's big enough, right? 

At any rate, the wedding is 6/21 and I needed to quilt and bind and wash it before then, so had to get cranking on it yesterday as I was running out of time! I finally got it all quilted last night. I had a lot of trouble in the beginning and it was stop-and-go for a while, but I knocked it out and I think it looks pretty good! Tonight I get to the embroidered signature, and tomorrow night I hope to apply the binding so it can be stitched by this weekend, just in time for washing. It will be nice to have this finished so I don't have to worry about it. One less thing to think about is EXACTLY what I need right now. Also to not be working on really warm quilts in 90* heat. Ugh.