Eye Spy A Dolphin!

I thought I'd show you some of the progress on the Dancing Dolphin quilt today. The binding is complete, and the quilting on the dolphin has commenced. Amy is very happy that her quilt is drawing nearer to the finish line. I've been working quite hard on it this week, which is a nice change from the zero work on this quilt for the past however many years it's been sitting around. My friend Renee made this quilt at the same time I pieced mine, and hers has been finished for some time now, and even hung in our guild show some time back.

The first picture is one of the cute blocks. I had a small piece of fishy fabric, and the centres of the log cabin blocks all have a different piece of the fabric cut out. This one has clown fish (which Cameron calls Nemo). There are others with dolphins and Dory. I'm thinking about doing some beading on the coral or maybe around the edges of the fishy fabric. I'll decide when I get there :-)

Here is a close up of the Dolphin's eye. I have quilted around it with a sparkly purple DMC thread. That was kind of hard work, as the roughness of the metallic thread actually made the batting beard a little while I was pulling the thread through. The beading was fun, I like the blue and purple, but I may change the clear ones for some a little smaller, and make them a little neater. I'm not going to do that now though, because by the time I finish, I will probably say I'm happy with it.

Lastly, here is the Dolphin's tail. Once again, I quilted the tail with the sparkly purple DMC thread. I don't know if you can actually see any of the sparkle at all, it was hard to get good light this morning. By the time I got to quilting the tail last night, I figured out that when I used a bigger needle to quilt with, the quilting was easer and there was less bearding. A good lesson to learn before I started quilting on the body of the dolphin.

Thank you to everyone for their suggestions on quilting the dolphin. A number of you thought about lines echoing the shape of the dolphin, or movement lines. I thought that would be what I'd try first. If I get the chance, I'll do some of the body today, but I may not get the chance. I'm taking Amy with her 'bestie' to the Plaster Fun House again today. She loved it so much last time, so it will be a fun outing for the two of them!