Snowflake Wall Quilt

I quilted this 41" wall-hanging last week.  It is pieced from Fairy Frost materials, a mystery blue-black background and a black batik border.  Quilting on black is definitely not for the faint-sighted, as it takes a ton of concentration.

 I quilted the border on the black and part of the curved-crosshatching with a Wonderfil silver metallic thread.  It is my all time favorite for metallics.  It is smooth and never gives an issue with the machine.  But, quilting with a starkly contrasting color gives me hives, so I chose to limit it to just outlining the key motif.  The rest of the detail would have to show with the relief of the quilting.  This piece has wool and 80/20 batts to help with that job.

 I quilted wonderful swirling and undulating feathers into all four corners.  They are so much fun to stitch out.

As you can see, the client chose a black backing fabric (more hives).  I use a white bobbin with my silver and clear thread, and it shows most prominently.  It shows every good and bad stitch.   Not my favorite thing, but part of this job.

 This shows the piecing, and how it is really done with 4 or 5 different Fairy Frost materials.  There is an ever-so subtle change of color here.  And I stitched in the center with silver.

 There are several small fills stitched out in black Glide thread.  The dense fillers help to make the feathery details pop out.  Little swirls, flames, bananas, pebbles...maybe more.

The client told me to be careful with using the piecing as a reference because some of it was off a little bit.  I hope that the "overlay" style of quilting helps to hide this.  I like to make a design for the quilting that is different, yet one that enhances the piecing.

Though I spent 2-3 hours longer on this than I budgeted, it is just the kind of project I love.  It had a well and easily defined design.  I quickly got my head into the work, and couldn't care less that it was going long on the budget.  I knew that I was creating something I would love in the end.  That is what it is all about.   It's the kind of project that you can practically see the end right from the beginning.  Love that.

Right now, I am 3-1/2 days into the polar opposite quilt.  The one on my frame now is enormous.  It is equally as detailed in it's own and different way.  I am still wondering what day I will catch a glance at the bottom border, and I know that even when I do, I will still have a few more days finishing places here and there that I left empty.  Huge quilts are not for the faint at heart, or those like me that need instant gratification.  Harder than that, while this has been on the frame, eight new quilts have come in, and I have received numerous inquiries.  I need a clone of me to work at night when I sleep to make a feeble attempt at keeping up!  I'm not a fan of being behind, or feeling like I am behind...even when I am not really behind.  It's like my perfect world would be to get a new quilt the day one is picked up!  But the world doesn't work that way - as someone told me earlier, it sucks much worse to have no quilts in the cupboard than to have too many!