My Last Ladies of the Sea

This is my 5th Ladies of the Sea quilted in the last 12 months.  It will be my last for a while.  The amazing applique artists that send me these quilts are wonderful, but I need a good 6 month break, This is a grueling 2-week quilt to quilt.  After a while the amount of detail work required to carefully quilt around each and every applique starts to make your back, arms and neck tired.  So if you are out there and think you want your's quilted, you can inquire with me, but it will be into 2017 before I actually will quilt it.

This is by one of the students of the person that did the 2nd one I quilted (see Dec 2015).  The applique and embroidery on this Ladies is absolutely phenomenal.  There's not a stitch to be seen, or a thread out of place.  It is THE kind of quilt I'd want to get if I were collaborating on a show quilt with somebody - no issues whatsoever! The hardest part of my job is determining what to do to make it different and unique from the others.  I made small tweaks from previous plans.

I introduced a lovely pink-purple variegated thread on the feather work to help tie the central part of the quilt to the stars in the corners.  From afar, the colors don't really show, but up close, it is this.

 The feathers create a lovely secondary pattern for the background, breaking up the fact that it is just sashed squares.

 The ship blocks are essentially the same as what I have done before.  It works, and I just could not reinvent this wheel in a better way.  Some quilts are like that.

 The variegated thread is also on the backfill around the mariner stars.

 I wish I could count the many hundred little dots that are on this quilt.  This is a mere small section of one border, and there are 42!  Too many!...

 And a few shots of the gorgeous backside...  The bobbin thread for the clear ditchwork is actually a sage green, and it shows the outline of everywhere I quilted beautifully.  Normally I choose a thread best matching the background fabric, but this time I ventured out!

That's all folks!...Have a good weekend