A Quilt With A Looong Story

I began this quilt last year, May of last year to be exact. It began with a large stack of scraps I had left over from other quilt projects that I had to use up. I decided to make a double wedding ring pattern with them. That was the first decision. Then I began searching online to get ideas for color schemes. My very favorite palette is blue-and-white, but I had so many beautiful materials I wanted to use that I decided I would incorporate lots of different colors. The problem was to do this neatly, in such a way that all the fabrics would work well together. I came across a quilt online that used the wedding ring like a color prism. Their colors were much more vibrant than mine, but they gave me the basis for my idea. I would use blue, pink, green, and yellow like a prism, with my favorite colors, pink and blue, as the primary colors.
I had a lot of blue, and green fabrics to work with, but I had to buy a few extra yellows and pinks to complete the necessary number of sections. I also decided I wanted to make smaller rings than most double wedding ring patterns call for. I pieced all the rings together completely by hand in just a few months, then stitched the rings onto the white border. Now it was time for the big decision -- how to quilt it. I had made three full-sized and two small quilts before, but I hadn't done complicated quilting on any of them. I searched dozens of books at library before I came up with my final plan: intricate heart in the center of the rings, cross-hatching on the white border, a single row of hearts on the blue border, and simple zig-zagging on the outside white border. I did get side tracked for a few weeks considering the idea of an appliqued border, but gave that up finally as just too complicated.
I began the quilting process. All the quilting was done by hand. Some books recommended pencil instead of disappearing ink for marking quilt designs, but that would have made washing necessary once the quilt was complete. I just couldn't take the idea of washing it and possibly ruining seams that I had worked so hard on, so I used a disappearing ink quilter's marking pen and saturated each place with water as I completed it. I did have trouble getting the ink to disappear a few times and almost had a panic attack, but if I let the marks soak in enough cold water or used ice, they eventually came off.
Here you see the finished project, completed this May almost exactly a year after I began it. I did cheat and attached all those long borders by machine; otherwise I can say the quilt is completely handmade. What did I learn from this experience? A lot about quilting, but most importantly, I WILL NEVER DO ANYTHING THIS COMPLICATED AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!