The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I almost feel like re-naming this quilt. Rather than "Colors of Hope" in should be "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." I am really disappointed with the final product of my full size Colors of Hope quilt. I decided to make a lap quilt using this design for the live auction at my local Relay For Life, but I feel that it really isn't my best work!
The Good:

The front of the quilt. I think it looks great (although I am wondering why I added the little birds next to the HOPE.) I love the way all the colors look together, and seeing the bigger prints like the purple, black and blue are great in the larger scale.
The Bad:

The back; I did not plan ahead when piecing the back together. I love the pink fabric with the inspirational cancer words all over it, it is perfect! I thought it would be a great idea to do small blocks of the different cancer colors, and write which cancer each block represented. And I love that I added this....but I should not have put it on the edge of the quilt! When I cut the back down to even the sides, I cut off some letters....

and my label....

which I mistyped when I printed it as well. I pieced the label in with the quilt, so I am going to iron a new label over the existing one....and I wrote in the letters that were cut off on the cancer blocks, although some were written onto the binding. :(

The Ugly:

Not sure how well you can see my quilting stitches in this picture, but they are not great. My sewing machine and I are not cooperating when it comes to tension lately. When I started quilting this quilt the back tension was giving be a hard time, my top thread was showing through. Even when I tightened the thread tension it still gave me problems. I stopped quilting, took out the stitches and came back to it another night. This happened three different nights. Finally I got it to quilt for me....however after I was finished and looked at the stitching, I was not satisfied.
I am almost embarrassed to put this in the auction. My mom took a look at it and thinks it looks fine. I hoped after washing and crinkling it would look better, but I still am not completely happy. Any suggestions on why my thread tension is doing this? Is it my quilting....am I not consistent with my quilting speed  and pedal speed or is it the machine itself? I plan to take it in for a tune up when we are on vacation later this month, hopefully that will straighten things out.
I'll leave you with one last look at "Colors of Hope" aka "GBU." I love this photo with my Relay For Life decal laying over it. If anyone would like to support me in the relay for life visit my donation page here. You can also follow some of the links to find out about a local Relay For Life near you.

Oh, I almost forgot...what I learned from this quilt. Make sure you remember that the back fabric is bigger than your front when making a quilt sandwich and that the edges will be trimmed down when finished quilting. I should have made the white fabric on the right side of the blocks an inch wider. :)