Swirling feathers

Nell brought me a few quilt tops to quilt the other week, with the request that I start with this one for her daughter. I'm hoping to get it done in the next few days. It's sashed Robyn Pandolph squares set around a beautiful larger Colourque centre block, which I'll custom quilt. For the allover quilting I'm using baby pink BottomLine thread in the top, and a slightly darker peachy-pink in the bobbin - it matches the bakcing better, but is similar enough to the top thread that it doesn't show through.

It wanted something soft and feminine, but I thought I should do something different from the meandering open feathers I used on Nell's last quilt, and which I currently love! This design was inspired by one I saw on Jenny's blog and seemed like a good balance between free-form and feathers.

It took a while to get ready to quilt; partly because the seams were all over the place and needed careful pressing. The other reason was this:

There were loose threads all over the back, and a lot of them coming through the seams to the front (this is just a small sampling). I think both of these were partly the nature of the fabric; while lovely to touch, it appears to fray  snd distort more easily than most quilting cottons - possibly a trade-off for the softness, which I have to say is certainly lovely to quilt. Even though a quilt can get all folded up when being delivered, it's still well worth pressing your top thoroughly before it goes to your quilter. And have a check over your top for stray threads - they're much harder to remove later if they get caught in the quilting.