The Name Game

I have arrived at that arduous task which always stumps me. It is time to actually give this quilt a legitimate name. My husband and I struggled with both of our boy's names. I stubbornly wanted Henry both times, so I failed to budge on agreeing on a name until labor started. I got to use the name Henry when we adopted a cat. I have been calling this my "Italian Floor Quilt" for quite some time now, but it really needs something more showy or as my daughter would say, fancy. Somehow seeing the quilt label reading "Italian Floor Quilt" seems a little too boring and simple for the 70 hours of hell the quilting has put me through! So, please...Give me your thoughts on a name (ie...leave a comment!!).
I have had this back on the frame for 5 days now, and progress has been good. I haven't had too many issues other than that things have taken longer than I expected. What else is new?! I filled in the area between the cathedral windows with that "clover-shaped" motif. It is really a shape from the Venetian architecture. I have thought long and hard on this quilt as to how to bring in the architecture to the design. The clover shape is going to also be used at the center of the rosette.

The peachy border was completely picked out (4 hours of ripping), and something similar, yet denser, was quilted back there. I still want to do something down that center area to make the 2 intertwining paths "pop", but I haven't gotten there yet. And at the suggestion of someone at MQResource, I have put 3 mostly parallel lines in each of the 0.75" gold and ivory stripes. For those of you that do not longarm, please don't think that this was a fast effort. It was anything but fast. I think it took about 4-5 hours (much time spent burying threads too!). On a longarm, these are stitched with a straight template, and careful, careful guiding of the 43lb machine. The corners took forever with the intertwining sections (5 sections per corner, and 6 thread buries per section - you do the math). I was skeptical about how they'd look, and if I really could sew the lines straight enough, but I am pretty sure I love the effect.

I also did a bit of fill-in on the center. Now the medallion rosette has to be largely taken out and restitched once I figure out how to do the curves neater than I did them the first time, but I want to get everything else redone first. This weekend, I did the rays out of the rosette. They are every 5 degrees. And today, I did the very much micro-quilting of the gray-brown 1" border that surrounds the rosette - the one that has the very tight feathering. It is only a 26" square, but this feathered border took about 45 minutes.

I have one more thing to do before it will, once again, come off the frame for contemplation. I will assess/pickout/plan the redo of the rosette. You see this rosette is pieced differently than the ones in the Bella-Bella book that I have seen. Mine is curved piecing rather than straight, so the quilting is a bit more challenging! ...another "what was I thinking??!" moment

I am off to planning 2-3 more customer quilts and then I should be ready to get back on this bad boy...that should be just about the time I am headed to North Carolina for this!

Don't forget to give me a name suggestion :-))