Like Public Speaking in only your Underwear

Ok, this is more like a stroll through a spring garden. But when a quilt arrives to me which has a plain white backing fabric, I kind of stop and panic, like the deer in headlights. It's that "OH KNOW, what am I going to do, syndrome! Colors and prints do a supurb job of masking any quilting blemmishes. A white backing is like being naked. A quilter's nightmare :-)
I got this absolutely fantastic spring sampler recently from a client. I am really loving getting to quilt the samplers. I don't get bored, and I get to try all kinds of different quilting designs and patterns, in a small quantity. There are not 66 feathered hearts to do, which is tiring and a tad boring. Trust me, I did this a few weeks ago. When I was finished, I was ready to gnaw my fingers off!

The blue quilting marks have been removed since I took these pictures. The bird house is cute. I like the random feathered background.

I believe that this is a sampler made from Holly Holderman (Is that right?) fabrics for LakeHouse Dry Goods. I used some last year and some have the most gorgeous iridescent sheen. A few of these are light that. Plus, one of them has cherries, and I know one of those lines did as well.

The owner wanted a feathered heart, as I did here, but it was just not appropriate for her floral border. So I snuck a couple hearts into her pieced blocks.

The hollyhocks with orange buttons are cute. I had to take off a few buttons in another spot because they were just smack in the way!

I have been using this swirling fill on a few things lately and I really like it. It's very effective here I think.

Oh, and here too! There's such a nice variety. It's not all applique so I go nuts outline quilting every applique, but a good mix of pieced blocks too. I seem to have gotten past my dreadded fear of needing to do outline stitching that I had 6 months ago. I did a considerable amount of ditch stitching/ruler work on this quilt.

And here's a peek at the border...bead boarding in a sage green thread. I didn't want to quilt a meandery floral border so I chose this instead. And the curved cross-hatching which is actually done with a circle template this time to keep all arcs consistent! Sometimes I even impress myself :-)

Because I didn't want ANY tension issues, I went with coordinating bobbins. The top of the quilt is stitched in yellow, sage green, two shades of pink, and white. So...the back shows all of these colors too. It is not evident unless you double click on the picture, but in real life all colors do show. As do every little blemmish I made. From the front, I love the quilt. From the back, the white is a harsh reminder that we are all human. But, that is partly the perfectionist in me talking. It turned out lovely.

And I will leave you with a funny comment made by my 8 yr old. He's pretty sharp, but he thinks he's brilliant.

He says, "Frankenstein is a genius"

Dad & I look at each other puzzled, "No, I dont think so"

Madder he more emphatically says, "yes, I know this. Frankenstein is a genius"

then he says (in a humbler voice we rarely hear), "Oh, maybe that was Einstein"

The effort to hold back the funny smirks was hard.