Thank you everyone for your lovely compliments!
Originally Posted by lots2do
I like the waves a lot. A good friend who is a good quilter said to use curves when your pattern has a lot of angles and vice versa.
Yes, this usually works very well, along with keeping the quilting simple on complex fabric/piecing, and then doing the more interesting quilting when the fabric is a solid and/or the piecing is simple. I learned that the hard way, I once had to pick out quite a bit of quilting I'd done on a border because the piecing and fabric were just too busy for the pattern to show up.
I forgot to mention that in the LJ quilting group, we came to the decision that the border might be a good spot for beading, using little matte seed beads scattered about randomly. I can always decide that when I get to it.
I really am stuck with the top half of the shell, though. I'm not sure that what I've sketched will look good. I'm now wondering about running the curved lines the other way, so that they follow the curve along the top of the shell. And what do I do with the triangles, the bits meant to represent the sea lapping over the side of the shell? Do I do the same quilting pattern for them over the two little beige triangles further down?