Peacock Quilt

This gorgeous quilt was brought to me by the husband of  one of my clients.

Richard does absolutely stunning handwork, as you can see! 

I love the fact that he and his wife both quilt and compete against one another at the state fair.

They are both very talented quilters and are as sweet as can be.

I'll be honest with you, I struggled quite a bit trying to decide how to quilt this quilt. I knew that I wanted to really maximize the quilting on the white fabric, but after drawing up about 4 different designs I still wasn't sold on what I had.

The only thing this quilt really "said" to me was that I needed to frame the peacocks with an oval and then do filler quilting on the rest, but I just wasn't sure of what fill to use. Since this quilt felt more traditional to me, I decided feathers might work.

I went ahead and quilted out the first block, and guess what? 

I wasn't in love with it. Ugh!

So began the unpicking.

After spending a bit more time researching design ideas and drawing them out, I finally settled for what I'd call a little bit traditional and a little bit modern.

The peacock feather wreath seemed geometric enough that I decided a more modern back and forth line fill would suit it nicely. When I tried quilting feathers around it, it felt chaotic and cluttered.

The peacocks got the lovely quilted feathers on the outside of the oval frame and paisleys on the inside.

I think I hit a good balance of curves and straight lines.

I encouraged Richard to not only enter it into the state fair, but also into HMQS next May. I'm not sure if he will, but I think it would do really well there. It's simply stunning in design and handwork execution.