Wizard of Oz Quilt

My Wizard of Oz quilt if finally done!  This fabric was bought almost a year ago on a trip to Columbus, Ohio.  My husband knows that the Wizard of Oz is one of my very favorite films so when we visited a store that had themed fabric for sale he wanted me to buy some.  This was very early in my quilting experience and I was not very good at figuring out how much fabric it took to make a quilt.  To make this harder, I really didn't have a pattern in mind, so the fabric sat for awhile while other projects for which my vision was clearer became realities.  Finally I decided to use a pattern called Charming Fractions as the basis for the quilt, with some modifications, or course.  I wanted to use the yellow brick between the story blocks to convey the "follow the yellow brick road" theme to the movie.

The colors are much brighter than I usually use, but the movie itself had that sort of bright, almost gaudy feel to it.  The quilt had several changes during the making.  At first there was going to be an additional border of a darker fabric outside the red.  But once I stood back to look at it, it seemed to detract rather than add to the look.  This made the overall size a little awkward for the backing.  A single pass of fabric was slightly too narrow for the quilt.  I ended up adding the darker fabric in the back and using it for both my label and some quotes from the movie in each corner.

Then there was the binding.......I cut it out wrong - twice!  The binding was originally going to be red like the border because had I known in the first place that I would have only one border, I would have made it wider.  But after ruining that fabric I decided to go with this stripe that I just bought on my recent trip to Lancaster.  It turned out better than expected, although I think I would have preferred the red instead, but that was not to be.

I'm pleased with the quilting itself.  This size quilt was much easier to handle in my little machine than some of my previous projects.  I used straight lines on the blocks and then a free motion meander pattern on the yellow brick, again to feel like you were wandering down the road.  The back fabric represents the Kansas part of the movie which was filmed in black and white with the characters in their "real life" roles while the front is all about Oz.

Then there's the intended recipient.  At first I was going to keep this quilt for myself.  But a few months ago I attended a reunion of my college roommates.  One of them I hadn't seen in 30 years.  I was reminded of how she also liked the Wizard of Oz and how she joined me in dressing up as different characters in the movie for Halloween.  So, the quilt is going to be sent to her as a little surprise package.  All that's left to do is write a note, print a picture of us as Munchkins, and box up the quilt.

So, now I have one more to finish quilting and then I can move onto some new projects!  And, in case you're concerned.....I have plenty of fabric left if I want to create another Wizard of Oz quilt.  But, I think I have several other projects in the cue before I tackle that.