Close up of the borders

I received a request for a close up of the borders. I ended up doing something different on each side. This whole quilt ended up being a testing ground for quilting methods I never tried before! :)

Close up of the pebbles.

I followed the gist of Mary's Pebble Tutorial. I have gaps galore, non-matching lines and I even traced some pebbles like 3 or 4 times over because I couldn't get into the position for my next pebble. All in all, great learning experience and it uses a TON of thread. :)

Next border I attempted to echo quilt the feathers.

I have no idea how in the world long arm quilters manage to keep a steady distance between the echo lines. I tried to use the side of my free-motion foot to guide the distance, but it wasn't a complete success.

I gave stippling a shot.

The nice thing is that stippling doesn't really mind the extra jerks you accidentally make. If you do it on a meander, it doesn't look so smooth, you know? Stippling? Just don't cross the lines and you're good. :D

Last border was lines and squares.

Phew. It's hard to guide the quilt in a steady manner. I don't even want to think how hard it might be to do that on a long arm machine. Or is it easier?

Now that I'm all done with the quilting, I measured it again. It went from 30x37 to 29.75x36.25. Huh. Will have to measure again after the binding/after washing. I'm very curious where most of the shrinking happens. Fabric? Batting? Quilting?

Leah