Here’s the finished Carolina Panthers Quilt.  It’s a simple design; however, completing it required much more time than I ever imagined to get everything to my liking.

• Matching the exact shade of cyan blue was akin to going on a treasure hunt.  It took three sets of eyes and visits to four stores before I finally found the right shade of blue.
• Locating the “just right” black & white stripe also took a fair amount of sleuthing.
• All 16 of the panther blocks were individually fussy cut. It took a lot more time than the usual way of cutting a 6-1/2″ strip and then sub-cutting the strip into 6-1/2″ blocks (not to mention twice as much NFL fabric), but the results are so worth it.

The quilting design is simple.  I used the Warm Blend 50/50 batting that allows you to quilt up to 10″ apart.  Diagonal quilting directly through the center of each square to make an “X” was perfect for this quilt.  My new soapstone pencil made quick work of marking the diagonal lines on my black and blue squares prior to machine quilting.  I saved the white squares for last and felt comfortable enough to eyeball the diagonals on those.  Very happy with the results!

This is the first project I’ve ever designed in EQ7, importing photos of the panther logo and everything.  The most exciting part of the project was seeing the quilt come to life and and how closely the finished project resembles the mock-up done in EQ7.  Too cool!