Gloria's Amazing Applique quilt

This quilt was a long time in the making. Gloria is a really productive piecer, and after devoting her capable attention to this applique stunner for A WHOLE YEAR, she brought it to me for quilting. Look at this thing! It's amazing! It's intimidating!!!

I love, love, love this piece. I'm so glad Gloria had the fortitude to get through it and enough faith in me to let me quilt it. I developed a strong appreciation for all the applique work she did when I quilted in the ditch around every single piece of it. Then I echoed 1/4" away from the applique. Then I filled in the background space with a tight filler and added continuous curve in the checkered inner borders. By staying off the applique, it maintained loft from the batting underneath and gave the quilt a lot of dimension. It pops out and grabs your attention. I'm really pleased with it!

My quilting is all free-motion, hand-guided on an APQS longarm quilting machine.