Audrey - finished at last!!

This has been by far my biggest and most ambitious quilting project ever!

I started with this pixelated image:

Using YouPatch, I generated a pattern with just over 2000 pieces and, over the course of about 50 hours, I made the quilt top.

Here she is half-finished at the Melbourne Stitches & Craft Show last year

The next challenging issue was the quilting. I knew that I had neither the time (before QuiltCon) or the capacity to quilt this quilt. I ended up deciding to use professional quilting services. I was unable to find anyone who would be willing to treat this project as an art quilt and to quilt in and around the facial features and structural contours. So I decided to keep it simple and asked for vertical lines, unevenly spaced.

Here's what I got back .... exactly what I asked for:

It just wasn't right. She looked too ... well .... lined! I knew I had to unpick the quilting and go back for another quilting design.

In order to reduce the risk of getting another quilting design that looked wrong, my clever husband whipped up some preview options:

I decided to go with the Baptist Fans design (bottom right). It felt softer and was more likely to NOT emphasise my somewhat imperfect piecing skills.

Here's the preview:

And here's what I got:

SO much better!!!

The next big decision to make was the binding fabric. Back to Dan and his awesome preview skills:

I went with the red option to bring out the red in her lips.

And now she is finally finished!!! 

There was only one real choice in terms of where to photograph her. ....

Such a relief to finish this one. I'm so happy with the end result and can't wait to show her off in Austin next month.

Have you ever had to unpick your quilting?

Would you love to be able to preview a quilting design or binding choice?

I'd love to know!!

Happy stitching to you.

Andi xx