50th birthday quilting marathon DONE!

Seems like forever since my last post as I was a whirlwind of creativeness starting Tony's (my husbands best friend) 50th birthday quilt. One would ask why, when I knew he was having a birthday for quite some time, I leave it till 4 days before the occasion to begin thinking about 'what to do'. Mmmmmm...... won't think too long on that one!
I knew I wanted the blocks to be a visual representation of moments and memories in Tony's life, but my biggest hiccup was how to put it all together. 
And you know how you actually create a wall and then just can't make yourself climb over it? Well that's what I seemed to do. I fluffed around and had bits of blocks all over the living room floor so that by Friday I was reaching the initial stage of "Ok, I really need to get myself going here cos tomorrow morning we are in the car heading up to this party!".
And like all things I worked to the deadline:)

Funny how it ended up leaning towards the blues colourwise, but I used the red to add zing through the lettering. Each of the blocks has its own little story and includes the logo from his company, favourite sporting activities, countries that hold special memories, etc.
Don't you love the birthday cake? It's from a Mary Lou Weidman (I think?) and I've got 10 candles on it to represent a decade, and 6 layers to the cake - 5 for the 5 decades of his life so far and 1 for the next decade he's entering. Deep and meaningful, ay!!!!
Worst block of all to work on was this one -

Those jolly Space Invaders were so small, but the words at the bottom were even worse! My husband and Tony apparently wasted some of their misspent youth playing this game and Vince really wanted me to have a block featuring this in there ( actually Vince wanted a block with a picture of him in the quilt but I said no way!).
SO for a marathon effort I'm pretty pleased with how the quilt turned out. Didn't hit the pillow til 5am Saturday morning then up again at 8.30 to hop in the car and drive the 2 1/2 hours up to Auckland. Lunch with my Aunty (who I still need to make an 80th birthday quilt for) to celebrate her birthday having spent parts of the trip handsewing the binding on the quilt and experiencing bouts of car-sickness along the way.
On to the house we were staying at where I continued sewing the last side of the binding while Vince showered then sewed the label on before I, too, had a quick shower then off to the 50th.
And did Tony like his quilt? Well, who would know, as he didn't open his presents!!!! 
Still waiting to hear................
Ciao,