ZooAnimals

This quilt has been in the cupboard for about two years waiting for a binding. It was the first quilt I have ever done (I was 79 then ) and was epic as a first starter, this is typical of me over indulging and thinking it can't be that hard. I had been tinkering with a Janome 11000 se I brought as my wife wouldn't let me use her machine. I have been interested in Ancient Egypt all my life and this would be a good theme for a quilt. I couldn't find a decent embroidery kit so I started to design something from the designs I found for sale on Etsy. The main feature is the center, this is applique at its most complex for a beginner, it has 4 panels and each has 5-9 applique overlays. The instructions were a nightmare and it took me 3 attempts to get the cat scene to an acceptable finish..Learning applique on a complex piece was traumatic, and learning to outline -tack down- trim- finish with badly described instructions. My bad as I thought it was going to be a breeze. So the Hieroglyphics features are from genuine pictures and one with several panels is called Breakfast, this is a feature along each side, and is the women and children rest of them are figures that are typical of ancient Egypt. The three borders are Lotus flowers and the blue is the Nile River with fish added randomly. The panels are 10x10 so all the designs were done as split designs as the hoop on the machine was only capable of 7x7, this also was a learning curve at the time with a lot of mistakes, another story. So this is about to be finished.

mmunchkins

Beautiful, but I agree that you were nuts to start off with this complex of a project.

Rhonda K

It is fabulous and deserves to cross the finish line. As a beginner, we don't know what we don't know. Best to dive in for the challenge and learn along the way. Now you know what you didn't know and can work through the bad directions.

Congrats on your accomplishment and your journey this quilt!

QuiltMom2

What came to my mind was the thought that if you're going to quilt, quilt big! Wow! If you can finish it on par with the African one what treasures!

Barb in Louisiana

That is a fantastic quilt. Your story has a beautiful ending. The one big takeaway I have is that even though some quilting tasks are harder than others, you have the ability to overcome and make something beautiful as your final result. Job well done!

Quiltwoman44

I love that quilt. Quite lovely. Especially fond of the colors!! Have fun.