Finish it up Friday: Hello Kitty Quilt Top

 I've been excited to share this finish.  I really worked hard at finishing this Hello Kitty top.  I truly considered giving up on this project because all of those tiny squares!  But one thing that kept me going was that I already had cut all of those squares and I didn't want all of that time and effort (and dull rotary blades!) to go to waste.

Once the head of HK really became apparent, working on the rest of the quilt felt more exciting.  And another fun thing that happened with this project is that my daughter, Charlotte (for whom this is for), really got excited about helping me with it.  For about the last 1/3 of the quilt, I would tell her what color squares I needed, and she would choose them and lay them out for me.  It was fun doing a "team" project.

I also have to say that it is SO satisfying to look at this quilt and marvel that most of it came from my scrap bins.  The only squares that weren't were the bright solid white and the dark gray prints (because I didn't have scraps of those).  It's just so cool to make "something" out of "nothing."

I added the purple border to make this quilt twin sized.  The approximate size of this top is 72 x 88.

When we finished the top, I had Charlotte wear some of her Hello Kitty gear and pose for a picture:

I thought this was kind of a fun photo (below), it shows you how big this quilt really is/feels: like a giant stuffed cat is taking over our house.

I am going to look into renting a longarm from a new rental source I discovered in Colorado Springs in order to quilt this quilt top.  Cat fabric is so big right now- there are many lovely options for purchasing backing - especially this one- but I am pretty confident I will "force" myself to piece together something scrappy from my plentiful stash.  Within this past week, I have been doing a lot of de-junking, purge/cleaning and I just have got to use what I already have!

The Hello Kitty QAL was designed and hosted by Amy at Sukiedontyaknow.  I've been in contact with her a bit about this quilt and have made sure to repeatedly voice my gratitude for putting together this tutorial.  She really put a lot of work into it and it was well done and easy to follow.  Check it out and make a HK quilt of your own.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday.