Old Traditional Pattern with Bold Modern Prints

This quilt belongs to Carol.  She's a great prolific hand piecer from Panama.  I have quilted several tops for her in the last 2 years.  Here's yet another.  In fact, she's the one that created my curiosity about the elongated hexagons to the point where I had to make one.  I've learned my lesson and don't plan to make this one!@!   BTW, my hexies quilt is nearing done...the finish quilting has been done and I am adding some hand embroidery.  Mostly all that is left after that is a massive scalloped binding.  Digressing...

This quilt will go to a show this coming fall, along with a few others we have done.  This is a 52" quilt, all hand pieced.  She uses Inklingo to print the pieces for stitching.  That is why everything aligns so perfectly.

And she does love the bold large-scale prints!  I used a single layer of Hobbs Heirloom wool batting. Sometimes I do double batt show quilts, but I felt that there was enough risk with the amount of thicknesses at the petal intersections, that I opted to omit the layer of cotton.  There is just nothing worse than getting the needle-sense-failure everytime the needle cannot handle the thickness.  The wool batting will show off the loft nicely alone.  Many, many show quilts are done with only a single layer of wool.

Every, but every seam was ditched with clear nylon.  That 8" circle sure got a workout -- like 5-6 hours of workout or more.  Then, the details on the circles and petals were added.  I used 2 different Aurifil polyester 40wt variegated threads...one has shades of gold and orange, while the other is pinks and purples.  They show a little here and there, and blend well most other places.

It is always such a quandry what to stitch on such busy quilts.  You want the designs to show over the prints, but I don't want to overly complicate the design of the quilt.  I love creating secondary patterns, but in the end just decided that trying to create secondary designs might make myself batty. The pieces on this quilt really are not all that large either.

As I look at this (and of course it is already invoiced...DOH!), I am wondering if I should have densely stitched those purple stars.  You know...mash them down to the background completely.  I hesitate to do this on other people's quilts (there is that stitched past the point of no return - a risk I take on my own work, but infrequently on others), but it might really make the circles and petals pop more.   Thoughs on this issue??...Oh, the dilemmas...Hate the thought of altering a final cost.  Will have to ponder this some. There are 36 locations to stitch at, plus the reload time.  Sigh.  Buggers, the design artist in me thinks it ought to be done.

 It needs a good blocking to make it lay flat.  Intersections like the one below are so prone to "dimpling".  I see this routinely on some of the mariner's compass blocks where 8-12 seams come together in a point.

I had the pleasure of having a nice E2E to quilt this week also.  I get so many custom quilting requests, so I really do cherish the few simpler jobs that come my way.  My webpage header should read "I'm not just a custom quilter"!  Ha!  Time for the weekend~