Modern Quilt Guild Michael Miller Challenge quilt

Are any of you working on a quilt for the Michael Miller Challenge through the Modern Guild? This is my very first challenge quilt & I had so much fun doing it! Even though the deadline isn't until July, The McKinney Modern Guild is sharing finished projects at our June meeting, so I made sure I finished it up early. Here it is! I am calling it "Petals in the sky with diamonds" (note the nod to the Beatles!)

I knew I wanted to do some fussy cut English paper piecing as soon as I saw these fun prints. It started out with my three stars.....

 Which I then started working into a setting with three inch solid hexies. The solid I used is Michael Miller's cotton couture in seafoam. I hand pieced my whole top, which measures 12 inches along each side, total size about 22 inches square (if it was, indeed, square. which it isn't!)

and since it was hand pieced, hand quilting seemed to be the right thing to do! Have you all discovered tiger tape? My buddy Trae introduced me to it (ok, she even BOUGHT it for me!) and I love how it gives me evenly spaced, big stitch quilting lines....

 I saved the "Pegs a plenty" fabric for my binding, and then decided to buy some more of it for the back. I love how it gives a stripe effect to the binding without actually being a stripe.

 So there you have it. My first challenge quilt! I have seen some others coming together and they are amazing! I sure don't expect any great prizes to come my way but I'm pretty proud of what I came up with. Can't wait to see all of the others!