Thanks again for all the kind words!
A little update...:
We did "give" the quilt top to my parents, unfinished, so they would know it was coming. My mom went to work (Joann's) and told everyone about how we made a beautiful quilt for her, and then took it away!
While talking to her about what kind of backing she wanted, we came up with dying our own (she really enjoys ice dying fabric, and some of her previous ice-dyed work is on the front of the quilt). We found a "damage" 108" wide white-on-white fabric that she liked. The "damage" was that it had some faint brown spots (that would be hidden once we dyed it). So, I got the fabric 70% off.
We weren't able to get it dyed until this fall, so I had to wait to start quilting it. The big piece wasn't quite big enough, so I added a strip of a different fabric we dyed together (with more purple and blue, no green, or, maybe one spot where the wind carried the dye powder...)
I've got it all "echo quilted" around each and every block, and will start hand quilting the rest. I used Warm and Natural, so it only requires quilting every 10", so I shouldn't have to do a *ton* of hand quilting, but it will still take me a few hundred hours to complete.
The sewing machine is a Viking Husqvarna Mega Quilter I found last year on a local classified ads site. The wide throat made it nice to maneuver the quilt, but my shoulders were sure tired by the time I was done!
I'll update more once I have it finished, or at least part way hand-quilted.
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