Taking Turns quilt top

This is a quilt of firsts! The first entire quilt top I've made after my first quilt (ha!), the first quilt top that is this large, and the first time I've given it to seam ripping SO much! Once I made the blocks, I spent so much time arranging them just so, that when I sewed a row the wrong way I just couldn't leave it and chalk it up to "Kimi style".

The quilt top was so gigantic that I had to stand on the man's Jeep bumper & balance precariously on his spare tire to get the entire quilt in the shot without dragging my gorgeous fabric on the ground.



I love love love this fabric line! Peacock Lane by Violet Craft. Peacock color is very "Kimi", I've even had some of my hair dyed this color once upon a time. The exotic peacocks themselves with his full fan tail and his elephant friends are gorgeous yet fun. This was one of the first fat quarter bundles I bought and I had been hoarding it. I wanted to use it, but just couldn't bear to cut into the large pretty graphics. So, the gorgeous Peacock Lane sat sadly at the bottom of my bin for months.
The the perfect pattern came along! This is the Taking Turns pattern from the Spring 2012 issue of Quilts & More by Monica Solorio_snow aka Happy Zombie. Yeah, I'm a Happy Zombie fan. Had already been before she made me a perfect quilt pattern. I first began quilting towards the end season of her Happy Mochi Yum Yum line and missed out on getting it. So cheerful! So bright! So not mine. :( But I'm going to jump on her Winterkist line like a kid in a toy store as soon as its released. It may already be...I better go check!
OK but back to the quilt pattern. It was a perfect fit for Peacock Lane because I could use the smaller scale prints for the smaller squares, and keep the larger prints intact in the 18" wide rectangles. Once I set my mind to it the top came together in a jiffy. The only thing that I hung myself up on was arranging the squares since I wanted to keep as many of the directional prints turned correctly. Et voila!
I still have a bunch of fat quarters from this line so I'll probably piece the quilt back together with more Kona Charcoal gray. Once I get to quilting this baby, it'll be another first under my belt. My last quilting attempt larger than a mini was a disaster with FMQ. The original quilt was straight-line quilted with wavy lanes so I may consider doing something simple like that but I'm definitely open to suggestions. Ideas?