Botanical Beatles

yup, Beatles. Not Beetles, like the bug that would be near flowers.

The musical variety.

I received what is probably the most unusual quilting request. Initially I really was not sure it could be done cohesively, but give the client what they ask for if you can! She's making a quilt for a friend of her daughter, and she likes botanical things and she loves the Beatles.

The quilt is just about 83" square, and has a snuggly flannel backing (which is fantastic for showing off the quilting!). I have a layer of Hobbs 80/20 batting and stitched with one of my favorite threads for E2E jobs, Superior's Omni thread.
The quilt is from very lively fabrics. Looks to me to be a pattern made from precuts. It's cool how it creates the white squares on point. I knew that all the detailed requests in the world would never really show up on the heavy prints, so I had to use the ivory fabrics for the things I wanted to show.

I quilted it with a whimsical freehand that I do often with swirls and echoed feathers. When I reached the white squares, I stitched these leafy/flower shapes. They could be quilted continuously, enabling continuous stitching. This was a fairly time-consuming design to stitch out, but at least the stops and stops were limitted mostly to the edges and when I ran out of bobbin.

The ivory border is where it all got a little uncertain. Before I loaded the quilt, I marked out several Beatle's lyrics and song titles along the border with a water soluable pen. I thought I may have to turn the quilt to enable quilting the top, but it turned out I could follow the script upside down and backwards just fine! There are phrases like "All you need is love", "Hey Jude", and "We all live in a yellow submarine", to name a few, all around the border of the quilt. It's personalized to the recipient's taste.

The soft green back shows the texture nicely. Swirly, leafy and fun.