Nautical quilt - quilted!

I've had this quilt sitting around for a long time.  It was in a large stack my mother-in-law gave me, but she said she didn't care how long it took to finish.  So it probably took close to two years, when the rest of my quilt tops had all been taken care of.

In the main portion, I used a grey thread.  On the sashing I made a rope (from Angela Walters) and in the blocks I did a bunting that matched two of the fabrics.  I made some waves around the border in a dark blue thread.  I originally did the waves in the swimsuit quilt and it was nice to have something already worked out for a water theme.

The back was a solid, so you could really see the quilting well.  At first I was rather nervous about doing the bunting, especially with the solid back where you'd be able to see all my mistakes.  I knew there'd be several because the design calls for some travel over already sewn lines, and I just don't do that very well.

However, if I take a step back it looks fine.  Even better than fine.  I like how the bunting turned out. 

Swimsuit quilt

I finished quilting the swimsuit quilt for my mother-in-law!  It took a while before I figured out how I wanted to quilt it.  I thought about doing a beach scene, but wasn't thrilled with the idea.  I was looking around some of the blogs I look at for quilting inspiration when I saw some waves from The Inbox Jaunt.  It still took a bit before I decided to use them; my first efforts at drawing them didn't work very well.

But after looking at several other things that just weren't working for me I decided to go with the waves.  Mine don't look quite as nice, but for the most part they turned out fine.  One thing I should have done differently though is to figure out the best way of quilting ahead of time.

I had tons of starts and stops!  And then I decided the swimsuits needed to be tacked down a bit more, so I did a bit of stitch in the ditch.  If I had realized that ahead of time I could have saved myself so much time.  Oh well...not a big deal in the end though.

I also stitched bodies in for the bikinis.  It just didn't feel right putting water on top of invisible bodies.

It was rather cold the day I took the picture above...definitely not swimsuit weather.

Finishing this means I met my October ALYoF goal (#35)!  I'll also be linking up with TGIFF, Whoop-whoop Friday, and Finish it Up Friday.