Another ST quilt finished

I have another quilt finished. I'm definitely on a roll as I have another reveal after this one and a couple of quilts very near to completion. These are not as difficult as they sound because I have a huge backlog of tops/blocks that needed making into finished quilts.
So onto the finished quilt.
Last year  FQR quilt bee decided to make some quilts for Siblings Together. We decided on the scrappy trip around the world and made a blue one and a pink one. I had volunteered to sew the blue one into a quilt top, then a quilt. It was difficult as quite a number of the blocks sent to me were not 12 1/2 inches square but smaller. This I discovered is a common problem with quilting bees, mainly to do with the inaccuracy of the quarter inch seam.However, the blocks we had chosen have to line up reasonably well or it just doesn't work. So, I made several more blocks myself and some of my bee mates did too and I managed to make the blue quilt top. Then disaster struck in the shape of my house fire, so Kate kindly finished the quilt off and it was given to ST at the FQR retreat last summer.
Rather than do nothing with the smaller blocks, I  put 4 that were the same size as a middle medallion and deconstructed some of the others to make borders. I also had some flying geese blocks left over from Harri's quilt. I made a lot more and here is the finished result:

And the back:

 

The backing fabric is from Ikea but was designed by Beckman College ( I think there was only a limited run of this). The solid blue fabric in the quilt top is also from Ikea.

 

After the fancy quilting on my previous ST quilt I chose to do very straight forward quilting on this one. To add a bit of variety though, I chose a variegated polyester thread called Fantastico from Superior Threads. It was a disaster! I don't know if it was me and my inexperience, but the thread kept breaking and shredding and I had to unpick so much of it that my hands hurt. I also discovered that I had to underfill the bobbins or the thread just slid off the bobbin and tangled up.

 

 

 

To add insult to injury, the variegated thread doesn't really show up that well and I probably needn't have bothered!

 

I used a Kona navy solid for the binding to finish it all off.

 

 

I'm very pleased with the finished result ( and that it's finished at all) and I'll be taking it to the retreat next month to give to Siblings Together.

 

Quilt stats:

Finished size: 62 x 54 inches

Front: Spare blocks and Ikea blue solid

Wadding from stash

Backing fabric: Ikea

Binding : navy Kona solid

Quilted in Fantastico by Superior Threads

 

This is another 2nd quarter finish for FAL