Milly's Monswoon quilt

Now that Milly has shared her completed Monswoon quilt, here are some final photos of the whole thing after I quilted it. It was terrific to quilt, and I feel privileged to have been let loose on it! The brief was feathers, formal, and maybe a touch of whimsy. The whimsy had me stumped.

 

I spent ages playing with options before I started, but only ever finalised each bit as I got to it, so the design evolved as I went. I started by McTavishing the background of the stars in the middle of the swoon blocks.

Next I quilted the four feathered circles, and segmented the centre circle and filled that with more McTavishing:

 

I then used a variation on the feathered circle inside the stars:

Next up was a double-feather border, with more McTavishing filling the spaces around it:

The outer sections of the swoon blocks were filled with feathers (the wide points) and swirls (the dark diamonds), and I also quilted in the ditch around the coloured sections.

My next idea came from a blog I read, but I can't remember where. I decided to break up the centre spaces with some strips of different quilting, bordered by double lines. When I use this technique again, I'll do the double lines slightly further apart to make them stand out even better. I filled the strips with a large filigree design:

I used a variation on this technique around the centre block, using three sections (again divided by double lines) but instead of being parallel, they radiate from the centre of the quilt. The centre of the sections is the same filigree as before, and I used a double feather in the outer sections, to tie it in with the feathered border and circles.

Then it was just a matter of filling the remaining spaces with McTavishing.

All up this quilt took around 28 hours to quilt - though that's a bit of an estimate, since I lost track about halfway through, and had to guess a bit - and took close to 425,000 stitches.

Milly has some lovely photos of the bound and finished quilt and more of its story here on her Tin Whistle blog, including this lovely one of it on her bed, with matching pillowcases:

Thank you again, Milly.