Labrador Rag Quilt

My in-laws have owned seven Labradors over the course of 20+ years, so when I spotted a certain flannel in the JoAnns Black Friday ad, I knew right away I had to make my MIL a rag quilt for Christmas. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I stopped by my local JoAnns to make sure they had it in stock (they did!) and then came home to plot out a quilt and figure out how much I needed to buy. On Black Friday I was at JoAnns by 6:20am and headed straight to the flannel. On my way there I saw the bolt I needed in someone's cutting stack! EEK! I asked if she was buying all of it, thankfully she wasn't. I bought the rest of the bolt and it was JUST ENOUGH. No room for errors on this project!

Even though I had lofty goals to make two rag quilts between Thanksgiving and Christmas, due to circumstances out of my control I wasn't able to finish Kathy's quilt until this week. But I'm pretty sure she has found it worth the wait. :)  Here it is!!

I used my AccuQuilt GO! and rag die to cut all the fringed blocks first. Can't say it enough -- I LOVE not having to snip the quilt at the end!! I was very pleased with how the quilting turned out on my Sudoku Rag Quilt, so I asked Julie of 8 Claws and a Paw Embroidery if she would be willing to digitize a bone for me in the same style as her applique tackdown stitches. I sent her an image of the fabric and she sent back a design very quickly! THANK YOU! It worked perfectly! I chose a light teal thread like the bones on the flannel.

That took care of half of the blocks. The other half were marble/solid flannels to represent the yellow, chocolate and black labs. I used Embird Alphabet #22 (a redwork alphabet) to embroider the names of all the Labradors the Trammels have owned. I was relieved I had a teal thread the exact same color as the dog print, and that it provided a good contrast on both the light and dark blocks! (These pictures were taken before the first machine washing, so the true ragging effect hasn't taken place.)
Their black labs: Lady, Hope and Neo

Their yellow labs: Tig and Jed

Their chocolate labs: Quinn and Forrest

Once I got it all pieced, I shook it, washed it, shook it, dried it, and shook it again! Annaliese said, "it looks like a fluff monster was destroyed on the driveway!" :) Here's the whole quilt:

And a close-up shot: