Flamingo quilt finished!

Quite tricky trying to photograph an enormous quilt in a tiny apartment, particularly when said quilt has a black background. Anyway, here's the flamingo quilt I made for the Other, in all its quilted, bound glory. I'm really pleased with the way the pink binding and quilting turned out—the Mother thought the flamingo would have popped more had it been pink too, which is true, but I like that he (we'll call the bird a he) looks like a dusky silhouette this way.

The photo above is better for colour, but this one shows the quilting texture more:

And a couple other shots:

So, what have we learned?

1. Appliqué is amazing. I wasn't sure I'd ever bother with appliqué, especially by hand. But then, I wasn't sure I'd ever make a quilt, either. I like handwork like binding and hand-quilting, so it didn't surprise me that I really enjoyed appliquéing too. And to brag a bit, the Mother seemed to think I was a natural, insisting that my stitches were as good as her much-more-practiced ones.
2. Freezer paper is our friend. All quilters know this (or should). You can do so many things with it—least of all freezing your food. I traced my appliqué templates onto a a doubled sheet of freezer paper (one layer ironed to another), cut them out, ironed them to the wrong side of the fabric, cut the fabric out with a seam allowance, then ironed the allowance down to the paper template, using spray starch to keep the seam allowances pressed down. Then you can peel the paper right out, and the fabric keeps its shape for easy stitching. The Mother is a proponent of needle-turn appliqué (which I tried out for my Ransom Note mini quilt), but freezer paper was less intimidating for a beginner and works quite well for large pieces.
3. Print is nice. Many of my quilts so far have been heavily skewed towards solid fabrics, but I certainly have nothing against prints. I liked working with them here, and I've got plenty of designs in the queue that use a lot of prints.