Finish it up Friday: Sari Bari

It's done!!! This is my quilt for the Sari Bari charity auction, which will benefit women who are victims of the sex trade industry in India. The auction will run November 1 - 10 online at saribari.com. Raffle tickets (for a quilt) will also be available for purchase during that time, for those who wish to make a much smaller donation.

It's a twin size (64" x 92"), and I started it last Thursday and finished it in the wee hours of the night. I got the flu and had to take the weekend off, so I actually only worked on it for 5 days. All I can say is - I'm sore!

I was able to strip piece the spiderweb-y octagons, which helped things move faster. Just over 1/3 of the quilt surface is made with saris.

I ended up adhering the saris to some solid colored fabrics with a quilting, heat-activated spray baste.  It actually ended up working really well, and they weren't quite as stiff as they would have been if I used fusible interfacing. Other quilters, who had worked with the saris in the past, also mentioned that using fusible interfacing seemed to diminish the color intensity of the saris, since the white showed through the thin fabric. So solids were just the ticket!

I ended up doing a really large-scale meander (uh, time saver anyone?) in aqua thread. I used pink thread to machine bind the aqua binding on, and I thought the pink-aqua colors vibrated against each other really beautifully in the quilt.

While the meander was really simple, I think it'll crinkle up really nicely when washed. Yup, I just used an aqua solid for the back. So fancy :)

And for the two seconds that it got to hang out, completed, in my living room, I thought it was really fun to see it next to the Juicy Fruit quilt - warm and cool :)

I was really fighting working with these fabrics, and even though this pattern definitely isn't "me", I do really like this quilt in the end!!

Linking up to Finish it up Friday!