I thought I’d start with a picture of Ibby’s quilt, because it is fabulous!  Ibby hand stitched the appliqued roses in place and did such a great job of combining colors and spilling those roses out onto the borders.  I can only imagine how long it took her to stitch this beautiful quilt.

Here it is, on the frame as I am finishing up on it.  You can see the backing in this picture.  I am so disappointed with myself for not getting a picture of the back of her quilt, because the back is just as cool as the front.  She had leftover blocks from the front that she pieced into the back.  In this picture you can see where I quilted roses into the trellis blocks.

Here’s a shot of the border along the lower right hand side.   This shows how she spilled the roses out onto the border and also added a flange just inside the border.  Ibby wanted feathers quilted in the borders, so I stitched a couple of roses into each border and then quilted feathers around them.

And, here’s a shot of the top border with a rose spilling out into the border.  Ibby wanted echo stitching around the applique.  I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but I think she made a good choice, don’t you?

I am showing you this shot on the left, because I was following someone else’s “rules” on how to do feathers and I didn’t like how “thready” and uneven it looked.  So, I changed it up a little for the look in the picture on the right.

And, of course, no quilt would be complete without some surprises finishing touches to make it special and unique for the person it belongs to.

Ibby has a “bee” in her name, so her garden needs bees to help the flowers bloom.

Thank you, Ibby, for letting me quilt your quilt and share it with others for them to enjoy as well!