Sea of Blues

Here is a light custom from last week.  It is pieced from a variety of fabrics - both cottons and a teal batik.  I was wrapping up a couple easier quilts before I loaded one last big custom (the 3rd Ladies of the Sea of the last year!).  I could have easily just done an edge-to-edge pattern, but this is a gift for a special person that is getting married.  I had the OK to up the ante a bit.  The ivory fabric is a great place to let the quilting show more. 

To keep the time manageable, I still mixed in some fillers, like the swirls on these blue octagons. Mixing more custom techniques, like those quilted with rulers or feathers, with the faster fillers is a great way to give a quilt a custom look without an enormous cost. 

The outer border is this speckled dot.  I did a quilt last year that had a good bit of this on it, and knew not much of anything but linework was going to show.  Save the time for plainer fabrics.  While there is some ditch-quilting, there is not as much as some quilts.  This, too, helps to keep the cost from that of a show quilt to that of a pretty bed quilt.

It has an 80/20 batting and is quilted with YLI polished poly beige thread.

Here is the back, looking very aqua in the photo.  Ironically, it is a deep green. Strange!  The ivory bobbin shows quite prominently here!  It makes me wonder if I should have selected a soft green or aqua thread instead, so there was less visible contrast on the backside!

 I have one other small secret to let out of the bag...I came across this on Amazon recently.  Though the editorial gurus at AQS are busy at work deciphering my patterns and chicken-scratch, somebody has already posted a glorious cover shot of my upcoming book!  This is scheduled for a fall release, but I will update everyone on that when I have previewed the draft and know better.  The book is a new style for AQS - one that shares my history, design inspirations for the 3 quilts shown on the cover.  It also will give full patterns as well as quilting motifs.  Seems ambitious!

See you in a week (if I am a good girl!)