Nice! The sashing really makes it look like the boats are at sea. And the borders also kind of look like waves/water.
They came out awesome.
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Well done! Lots of work but beautiful result!
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Love these little boats. The plaids are so fun and varied. and the colors really play off each other.
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They’re beautiful.
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Ok, so now that I’ve had a good night’s sleep, it’s time to figure out the actual quilting. I quilt all my projects on my home machine. Normally, I do an all-over, meandering/stipple pattern that I learned on YouTube ages ago. I love how it looks and feels. Here it is on the front of a quilt.
And here’s what it looks like on the back.
But I’m not sure what I should do on these new quilts. I have one square in each of the two quilts, that contains the embroidery that @AudiobookLover designed for me, with his name & dates. It doesn’t seem right to do the stipple pattern over that, though I could get close to it, (inside the block, but just in the background space, not on the text or image). Then I could go back by hand, and add a few tiny, hidden, tacking stitches, to secure that area. On the back, it would look like an area I just didn’t quilt.
I do have a walking foot, and I’ve done one quilt with it, so I could do some ‘stitch in the ditch’. But to be honest, I wasn’t thrilled with how it came out on the one quilt I used it on. When I did that one, I ended up with puckers on the back in a few spots. It just didn’t feel as ‘well quilted’ to me, as my regular pattern. I’m afraid if I do the ‘in the ditch’ method, I’ll get all the way around the sashing, and end up with a huge pucker at the end of the rectangle. Or puckers at the end of each row of sashing. Here’s the one I did previously.
The sashing and borders are both very organic feeling batiks, that I picked precisely because they gave the feel of ocean currents, without actual being a cutesy print of water. I think they would look nice with the stipple pattern.
I want whatever I do to blend into the sky background behind the boats, and into the borders. The sky is an off-white, with a cream & grey dry brush-stroke kinda cross hatching. (It’s clearly a knock-off of Grunge.) I also want it to go nicely with the borders, which of course are medium blue, and dark navy, and the backing fabric is navy. I’ve noticed my stippling pattern works the best with the both the top and bobbin thread matching.
Finally, the batting I have has a maximum of 4" space between quilting and my blocks are 8". So even if I quilted in the ditch, I’d still need to do something inside the blocks. I could outline each sail or something similar, but I also don’t want to spend 2 weeks on some fussy-quilting.
The best I can seem to come up with is to do the stippling over the whole thing (going near, but not over the embroidery), in a light blue color. Hopefully the light blue wouldn’t stand out too harshly in the ivory sky, and would blend into the borders and sashing well, and be a pleasant contrast against the backing. I’m just not sure how it would look over the sails…
What do you guys think?
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Gorgeous! So very heartfelt & lovely. You’re going to make a lot of people cry their eyes out.
Stiple will be lovely. Or something similar that looks like organic waves & wind/clouds?
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@Magpie’s suggestions got me thinking. What if you were to do a ripple or waves.
The ripple has a cloudy/water ripple effect and the waves has a water/breezy effect.
You could get the quilting close to the embroidery without going over it. The ripple would give you the curves to turn away before you went over the embroidery and you might be able to do something similar with the waves.
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I love the wave idea…skip over the embroidered part and just do a simple box around it.
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I like this quilting design for an easy, all-over pattern. It looks like ocean waves or swirls of wind. Even quilted tightly, it drapes well after a few washes, but it does scale very well if you space it out more. It would be easy enough to get close to your embroidery but still leave it open in a way that looks intentional.
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”We got a full spool of thread, half a dozen wound bobbins, the baby is sleeping, and we’re wearing quilting gloves. Hit it.”
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Happy birthday, @AudiobookLover! Hope your day is great!!
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Happy birthday dear @AudiobookLover!!! 
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Happy birthday, @AudiobookLover!
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Aw, happy birthday sweetie. Hope you are having a fantastic day!
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@AntBee, @MistressJennie, @tendstowardschaos, and @Magpie, thank you all so much for the birthday wishes!! 
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I marionberries, submit this as my August BOM entry.
Fun working with greens! I may have posted this earlier in the month, who knows?
I marionberries, offer Pippa for August’s prompt - Embellishment
This is for my daughter’s quilt and this is her adorable tiny little Shitz Shu puppy, Pippa! It was a bit of a challenge as I drew out the pattern and then figured out how to piece as I went along. The embroidery adds character.
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This is such a cute and fun block! The embroidery definitely adds to the charm!
Darling! I love how personalized you made it!