Bloggers Quilt Festival 2014

It is time again for the Bloggers Quilt Festival. I thought I didn't have anything for the Bloggers Quilt Festival this year but I looked through my 2013 finishes and decided I did have something after all. This is my Giraffes Quilt; it is 34 x 37 inches and is entered in the small quilt category.

I bought the giraffe panel a few years ago at the NQA show in Columbus, Ohio. It lived in a plastic box for a long time. This was one of those things that I knew I would use but I never came up with any ideas that were right. I purchased that multicolor batik at the same time but there were only 2 fat quarters available. Everywhere I went I always looked for something to go with it but never found anything.

When I finally got started I  used fabrics that I had in my stash and only purchased the black and gold spotted fabric. The rectangles separated by zigzag fabric spacers was from a vest I made more than 15 years ago. I did not have large pieces so I had to know what I wanted to do before I cut anything.
My seam ripper got a real workout with this quilt. With each border I added I found something I needed to change. Once I started quilting it I thought I was finished using the seam ripper; but I was wrong. I did echo quilting around the giraffes and at one point I felt that there was too much echo quilting. I got some input from the Basement Diva's and I ripped out some of the echo quilting an, and as a friend suggested, I used the #4 Bernina stitch for the rest of the background in the center panel. It seemed like for every single step it was make a decision, stitch, analyze, rip, then stitch again.
When I finished I was satisfied and I can say that I enjoyed the process.
If you want to see the process as I agonized over each addition, look for giraffes in the side bar and you can follow all my steps.