Tish's Crane and Fish Quilt

I finished Tish's quilt the other day and gave it to her during our quilt guild meeting on Thursday. 

She loved it and I do too!!  She wanted this one custom quilted and asked for a few specifications.

She wanted gold thread.
She wanted a crane quilted at the top.
She wanted bubbles quilted at the bottom.

I took it outside to take photos of it like I normally do for my quilts, but I couldn't get the quilting to show up like I wanted.  This is a photo of the crane outside.

At first I was intimidated by Tish's request of a crane.
 She said if I couldn't do it don't worry about it.
 But she had given me a challenge and I wasn't about to give up on it. 

This is the inside photo. The blue fabric color is not  depicted right in this photo, but you can see more of the gold thread.

I'll admit I spent more time staring at this quilt than quilting it.  I was worried about not being able to draw with thread what I saw in my mind.  Finally with the deadline looming I quit worrying and just did it.  I started out with the anticipation of ripping lots of threads, but it turned out great the first time! Probably from all my practice on those small fabric postcards. I have made hundreds of tiny thread painted images, this time I just had to increased the size. So I suppose the old adage is true, "practice makes perfect" - well maybe not perfect, but pretty darn good.  :)

At the bottom I added a fish to go with the bubbles Tish wanted.  

It is hard to see the quilting here, I traced around all the images of the panel in gold thread.
When Tish said she wanted gold thread my first thought was,"Oy Vey!" 

I had worked with gold thread before and it wasn't pretty. I don't even want to repeat what was coming out of my mouth.  This time around though I decided to use a better quality (more expensive) thread hoping it would improve my results.  I bought a 1000 yard spool of Sulky gold metallic. It was priced at $16, but I had a 50% off coupon!  Yay! Love those JoAnns coupons.

I also opted for a Top Stitch needle instead of a metallic or regular 90/14. The better thread combined with the top stitch needle made quilting with gold metallic thread a breeze. I can't wait to have another project that needs gold thread.  It is so beautiful in this project.

Full view inside on the design board.

I never knew my design board could hold up a completed finished quilt all by itself!!
I love my board even more!!

I really love this fish!!

Close up of the tail.

=^..^=