Filigree quilting

My winter swap quilt is ready to bind and label. I quilted in-the-ditch around the brown pinwheels and flange border, then got out the silver metallic thread. I made a special trip out to get the exact needles recommended for the thread, and it certainly paid-off.

The wavy silver tlines through the grey sections were done with the walking foot; I thought I'd minimise the amount of FMQing with the silver! And being a small quilt, turning it around umpteen times wasn't difficult. I think the quilting really lifts these parts. The grey print is actually dandelions, but has a bit of a snowball look to it.

Then I needed to increase the density of the quilting across the rest of the quilt to flatten it out, but I wanted to leave the white fairy frost as unquilted as possible, to keep the shimmery effect.

After quilting the pink and white squares heavily (again, with the walking-foot) I designed a filigree pattern for the white corners, then used elements of this in the outer border.

I did have a brief moment of horror when I realised that the steam from the iron wasn;'t removing the blue marking pen, because that's for the white pen, and the blue one comes out with water, and I worried I might have set the colour and ruined the quilt, but luckily water took it out easily!