Fresh Off the Frame: A Feather-Licious Peacock Flourish Snowball Quilt for a BRAND NEW Quilter!

Fresh off my frame, and full of fabulously scrumptious feathery texture:

I just finished quilting this snowball quilt for a customer who is also my mom -- this is her very first quilt that she's made by herself from start to finish, and she decided to make it KING size!  Didn't she do a great job?

It's a 12 x 12 layout of 8" snowball blocks that she made following the pattern in the book Quilts! Quilts! Quilts!, 3rd Ed., by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes.  

Peacock Flourish Opulence Fabric, Mottled White Multi

When my mom picked out her fabrics for this project, her favorite one was this Peacock Flourish fabric that you see pictured above.  She took all they had left on the bolt and then filled in with batiks and blenders.  But, once she had finished making all those blocks and sewing them together into a flimsy, she was a little disappointed that it all looked "kinda plain."  She was not seeing those cool peacock feathers in her favorite fabric when she looked at the whole quilt from a distance.

I found the perfect quilting design to amplify the impact of the peacock prints in my mom's quilt, the Peacock Tail E2E design from Wasatch Quilting, shown below.  I mean, there are so many digital E2E feather designs out there, but the style of the feathers in this particular E2E design is so similar to the style of the feathers in the fabric print, right down to that long comma curl and the angle of the plumes radiating from the base of the spine.  

Peacock Tail E2E by Wasatch Quilting

It's also a very large scale, deeply nested design, which is more impactful on all of those big, "blank canvas" blocks in this quilt.

I had to run my machine pretty slowly to stitch this design accurately because it has some backtracking and several places in the design that require precise alignment to look good, but it was totally worth it.  

Batting is Hobbs Heirloom 80/20, and I chose Glide thread in color Peacock -- totally bizarre coincidence that's the color name, because wouldn't you have thought the color Peacock would be a deep teal rather than a pale lilac?  I chose this thread color because I wanted it to disappear on that printed peacock feathers fabric.  Had I chosen a darker shade of purple or teal, the quilting design would have been fighting the fabric print in those areas.

I love how the quilting design takes Center Stage on those deep amethyst batik blocks, don't you?  Now those blocks don't look "plain" anymore.  They look feather-licious!

(I should note that the question of whether those big, solid blocks looked "too plain" in the first place is a matter of opinion, and the only person whose opinion matters on that subject is the person who made the quilt top.  She's the one who wanted to see more feathers and less "plain," so that's why I went in this direction.  That's why I ask quilting clients at drop-off what they like best about their quilt and whether there's anything about it they wish they could change.)

Another thing I love about this design is that, because of its large scale and deep nesting, it's almost impossible to see where one row ends and the next one begins.  It gives the pattern a very free-flowing, hand-drawn look -- yet, because it's a digital pantograph, the quilting density is perfectly balanced and even from one end of the quilt to the other.

Is this Photo Overload?  I love this design!  It's not my new go-to feather design that I'll be stitching on a ton of quilts, though.  Had there been a lot of busy prints in this quilt, the extra hours that it took to stitch this particular design would have been a wasted effort.  But I think it looks awesome against the large swaths of solid fabrics that show off the quilting on this particular quilt.

What about the snuggle factor, you may be thinking?  Still good.  The finished quilt is still soft and supple.  Wish I had a better place in my home for getting a good photo of the WHOLE quilt, but this will have to do for now.

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

SATURDAY

UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

Scrap Happy Saturday at So Scrappy

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

BOMs Away at What a Hoot Quilts

TUESDAY

To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

WEDNESDAY

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

Free Motion Mavericks with Muv and Andree

FRIDAY

Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More

Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

 TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday