A Finished Quilt!

Happily, my Japanese x and pluses quilt is now finished!

Richard very helpfully held it up for me outside for this photo.  I like the way the grey and taupe colors are echoed in the background with the spanish moss and the painted deck. 

As I might have mentioned, I tried to be a bit more ambitious than usual when I machine quilted this one.  I had thought that the wide white space would be a nice place to try some quilting that would show up well.  So I bought a variegated gray 12 wt thread.  I have mixed feelings about the thread.  On the one hand, it is quite visible, but on the other hand, it created more lint than usual, although I could have remedied that with a larger needle--but I didn't have one on hand, and I was determined to do it right then!

So I did the leafy vine thing in the white spaces, the "oak leaves" in the "ribbon" and the "loop-de-loop" in the beige border with the thick thread.  Then I switched to a lighter weight plain gray rayon for the rest of the quilting.

Ta da!

 This morning I was outside pruning a lot of trees, and I took some More photos of the beautiful light pink camellia.... I love this tree.