On the Border

All the interior quilting for the Gardener's Journal is finished now. The only thing remaining is the outer border. I'm planning to leave the stop border open. This quilt is so densely quilted already, I figure I deserve a break on that little one-inch strip. Here's what I did today:

I quilted around the edges of the butterfly, and then filled in the square next to him with one of Angela Walters' designs.

Then I took my cue from the circles on the ladybug and pebbled around her.

The snail's shell made me decide to just follow that spiral around.

Here I did a sort of feathery fern. As you know, I'm not a fan of traditional feathers, but these ferny ones seem okay to me.

This next one is hard to see, and so I've turned down the brightness and bumped up the contrast some. It's a sunflower with pebbling in the center.

And just by happy accident, this flower ended up in the middle of the square beside it, so I just followed the lines on the fabric for that.

Here I did some back and forth chevrons, and just for grins, I switched direction halfway through.

This heart motif was easier to do than I thought it would be. Wish I'd thought of it earlier in the process.

The lady with the potted plants didn't get much quilting...a little cross-hatching in her hat and some cracks in her pots.

The last section was the garden shed where I quilted some siding into the walls and door just to give it some texture.

Also this morning, I finished up the bottom section of the blackwork project I started a few days ago. The pattern has the entire piece done in black floss, but I kind of like those little red accents.

I need to have this finished by the 27th. At the rate I'm going, I should have it finished in plenty of time.

So with only the border left to do on my quilt, I should have it finished by tomorrow at the latest. I wonder where my little cat will nap once it's off the quilting machine.

The next quilt up is too small for catnaps, but he'll probably find a way.