It's Done, It's Done, It's Done!

I finally finished my Super Mario Quilt! I've been working on this quilt sine November 2011 - so about 9 months now. I don't think my husband really ever thought I would get it done and I'll admit, I even had my doubts! It was such a colossal project! I can't believe it's done!

Here are some fun facts for you: This quilt has 6,144 tiny little 1 inch squares in it. Each character has some blue borders around them and the whole thing is framed with a black border and white binding. It weighs a ton with all of those little seams inside of it! I'll have to find out exactly how much one of these days. It is also the biggest quilt I've ever made - about 72 x 105. I had to take it to the basketball court in the park next to us to get a place where I could spread it out for a picture. It is quite large!

I spent a lot of time on this quilt. It took me 3 nights worth of time cutting out all of those little squares - probably about 10 hours total. Then it took me about 5 hours to sew each character together, so about 120 hours for that. Then add in another 5 hours getting the borders around each character, then an hour sewing all the characters together, and another 30 minutes for the outer border. (This is really adding up!) It took 2.5 hours to pin baste it all. What really surprised me was how long it took to quilt the whole top! I thought it would take me maybe one evening - ha! I was way off! I spent about 20 hours just stitching in the ditch around each character and for the details inside their designs, and another 5 hours stippling in the blue background (so 25 hours there). A lot of that time was spent fighting with moving the quilt through the machine since it was so heavy. Then, another 6 hours to sew the binding on and finish hand stitching that to the back. So, what does that get me? Roughly 169 hours of time on this quilt or 21.125 work days or $2,535 in wages. Haha - so this quilt is worth a lot in labor and probably about $200 in materials when all is said and done. :) Just some fun facts for you.

So, I hope you've enjoyed seeing my journey in completing this quilt. It has been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. My husband is very happy that he finally gets to use it now, and I'm happy that I can finally show it off! I'm sure this quilt will be a hit for several get togethers we have at our place. I already know it's a hit with the cats! :)

And, now for the winner of my Red, White & Blue giveaway...

Post #80, which was Scrapbook-ChickADoodle. I'll be contacting you by email to send off your package! Thanks to everyone who commented, and I hope you keep coming back to my blog for inspiration and creative projects even if I don't have something to give away.

Happy crafting everyone!