March Madness and Chicken Appliqué

Last section in prep process!

I enjoy college basketball games. Often as I stitch in fall and winter, I've a basketball game on the television. I'm partial to PAC 12 and WCC games. This year, I didn't watch as many games as I have in the past. As a result, my NCAA bracket sure took some hits. For three of the last four years, my bracket has done better than my husband's bracket. This year he has picked more winners than me! :) Besides watching some amazing games, it is fun to banter back and forth with each other about how "our teams" are doing or rather aren't doing!

Over the last few weeks as I watched the NCAA men and women's basketball games, I stitched pieces on the chicken. In my last post, I shared that I had one more section to prep on the chicken. I truly thought I had much more appliqué remaining than that! It felt surreal to prep the last section.

In the photo above, I had to stitch the long leaf that runs under the chicken feet first because another piece was on top of a part of the leaf. Otherwise, the last section wasn't as difficult as I had thought!

All the appliqué in place!

I've spent many hours on this project. I started it as a BOM in 2007! I was caught up until it came to the center panel. Then I was stymied with too many fiddly parts, too many over this and under that pieces as well as just too many pieces!!!

The next step is to piece and stitch a couple borders around the appliqué. It measures 41 1/2x 47 1/2 inches. It is supposed to measure 42x48 inches.  All that appliqué just takes up space! I know I'm going to be challenged with the pieced border! It feels surreal to be at this point. Although it also feels great to be this far!!!!

No, I didn't have a celebratory "nip" yet. I'm saving that for when the sleeve and label are complete and on the back of this project!

Thank you to 2017 Finish A Long to help me toward the finish.

You can read my first post on this subject here. You can read my second chicken post here.