Some Asian Beauties

Despite Mother Nature's efforts to make working difficult (aka, 2 snow days when kids should be gone back to school!!), I am trying to get going through the backlog of quilts.  Here are a couple that have a lovely Asian flair, but couldn't be more different.

This first one is a very large 100x111, and thankfully, the client only wanted it E2E.  Customs this large just take the wind out of your sails!  She chose the Whirlygig pantograph, which I really love, and I was most surprised how fantastic it looked on the quilt.  I chose a gold YLI polished poly thread that was a great match for the gold diamonds.  It was perfect.

The fabrics are mostly gilded, and are just gorgeous.  I especially love the gold butterflies (above...note to self "must have"!!) and the large mum (below).  It's enroute back to it's Pennsylvania owner, and I just know she'll love it.  What so many quilters don't realize is that not every quilt is really a good candidate for a custom.  This may be a very special quilt, but it's beautiful with an all-over pattern instead of custom.  Maybe better.

 My other Asian-ish quilt is Maggie Walker's The Blue Collection.  This is about 58x60.  I'd probably never have done it had it been huge!...It is completely covered with appliques, which the client has done a great job of.  They are needle-turned (or turned edge).  It has a ton of different indigo and Asian blue fabrics.  I spent 2-3 days just outlining all the appliques (while it snowed, and while the kids were thoroughly engrossed in their new electronic xmas gifts).

 Now I am onto filling in the yellow background.  Sounds simple enough, but I have a whopper cold, and this background just has WAY too many stop and starts because of all the appliques!  I am chosing a few different fills for the divided areas.

This is the first time I have done this filler.  Have seen it done by another quilter, and really love it.  It quilts up relatively quickly, and looks great.  It works well in areas with adequate space.  Around all the leaves (above) wouldn't have been so great.

We have a wool batt on this quilt, and I am using a SoFine pale yellow thread.  I'll have to do some stitching on the larger pots too in blue and white, but that will wait until Monday.  If it snows Monday, I think I will just not get out of bed!  This is a whopper winter thus far...awoke today to -12F (and that was at like 9am), and we have a solid 24-30" of snow on the ground.  Please don't remind me that there are 3 more months of this yuck!