So over the weekend my incredible machine that I use for everything died on me.   Isn't that tragic???  It is an amazing Singer Futura 250 and  I was devastated.  Thankfully it is under warranty (It was a gift that I received in June)  and I will be getting in repaired this upcoming Tuesday (huuuuge sigh of relief).

  Because my machine was down and I couldn't fill any orders for tote-bags, I had to resort to pulling out my dinosaur (aka, the sewing machine I made everything on up until I got my new one in june) and work on a quilt that I began piecing over the first half of the summer.  The quilt is an Safari themed queen-sized project and happens to be my first quilt ever.  I've loved piecing it but we'll see how much I love the actual quilting aspect in a few days.

By tomorrow I should have all the borders put on so the top of the quilt will be completely finished, but this is what I have thus far :)

This is the fabric I used.  The first thing I found was actually the stripe, and it made me think of Africa so I found some animal print, some tan cotton that looks like burlap, and little green with vines on it, a deep red and a fun swirly brown. 

I laid all the squares on my bed and tried my hardest to put them in some form of organized chaos.  I knew I wanted it to look semi-random but still pulled together enough to keep it from looking tacky or over-the-top.

 Since taking this picture I have added a 10inch dark brown boarder on every side and appliqued some small animal print accents into the edges.  :)  I'm pretty darn proud that my first quilting experience is turning out so nicely.