Kittens Back from the Quilter

My quilter, Tammi, has finished the quilting on the Kitten's Tale quilt.  I'm thrilled with what she did.  Tammi has done a lot of quilting for me.  Ordinarily, she does a pantograph, which I like very much.  I like using variegated threads on my quilts, and they are well-suited to the repetition of a pantograph.  This quilt, however, has so much hand work and applique that I wanted something different.  Tammi worked her magic this time with free-hand quilting.  I usually let her pick the design she thinks is appropriate (she's the quilter, I figure, not me).  This time, I suggested hearts and paw prints, but otherwise asked her to do what she thought would look best.  And we both thought brown thread would be the right choice.  Here's what she came up with.

She did a filler design on the appliqued blocks incorporating the hearts and paw prints as I had asked:

She echoed the heart motif in the borders and the pinwheel blocks.

She did the rail fence blocks as if they were little tiny quilts.

And I fell in love with the fabric for the back all over again.  This fabric was in my stash, and when I started working on this quilt, I thought it would be perfect for the back.  Fortunately, I was able to track down more because I only had two yards when I started, and I needed four.

The top image is of the quilt top unquilted.  I'll spread the whole thing out and include a picture of the whole quilt once I have the binding sewn on.  I'm using the same brown fabric that I used in the inner border.  And then it's destined to hang on one of the walls in my stair well.