I'mma number one!

About a year and a half ago whilst walking through the clearance aisle at Wally World I stumbled across some Mario sheets and blankets.  I used one of the sheets for the Bowser quilt but still had the microfiber blanket.   I had something special in mind for that blanket and it took some thinking to work it out.     I wanted the quilt to tell a story from Mario Kart, but how?  There's only so much room and I had a specific size the quilt absolutely had to be.    I opened paint and got to work... and worked... and worked...  finally I came up with this pattern.    The top portion is worked with 1.5" strips and the bottom portion (Mario) is worked with 2.5" strips.   It was amazing how much more quickly the quilt went once I started working with the 2.5" strips.
For this quilt I also did a few large background chunks instead of doing strips the width of the quilt.  Doing so saves a lot of time, fabric, and thread which is all pretty important to me.
  I was pretty nervous about quilting this.  I was tempted to not use batting since the backing was already heavy but my husband talked me into doing it and I agreed it probably was best, especially since there was such a stark difference in the thickness of the top and bottom.    The blanket was very stretchy and having already worked before with snuggle bubble I was kind dreading quilting this.   I took a lot of time with the pinning and it definitely paid off as the back ended up very smooth!
I got a little creative too and stitched in some Koopa shells as well as a star... which didn't turn out quite as well... I think I got a little cocky with the success of the shell.   Mario and Lakitu were stippled and the background along the words was stitched with a racetrack... that didn't turn out quite how I envisioned it, but it turned out, I guess.
I add the words to the top left as I felt the corner was black.   I kind of wish I would have done the letters in multiple colors similar to how the main screen is but I decided to use the awesome houndstooth that I picked up for the binding.
Pardon that cute lil' girl walking on the back of the quilt.  She loves it when quilts are spread on the floor and loves to snuggle them.   In a few years she'll be big enough to hold them up for me when I take photos.  Payback!  =)
This pattern is available on Craftsy!