Thanks Jenel, gramajo, dunster and Tashana!
Most of the fabrics, except for the organic cotton plush (from Westfalenstoffe), organic cotton faux lamb's wool (siebenblau.de) and the basic black for the eyes are all from Spoonflower. (For details see my blog entries on this quilt at kalaischreidoscopeofmymind.blogsport.de ). If you guys haven't heard of it yet, it is more expensive but you can design your own fabrics (for example, I designed the blue sky background for the quilt top) and have access to literally hundreds of thousands of designs from other members and available for printing on all different types of fabrics. I wanted to make the quilt an entirely organic quilt, so Spoonflower opened up a world of fabric possibilities for me!
Anyway, so far two votes for echo quilting. How close is too close to the applique stitching if I go for that route?
And *bump*....anyone heard of something like what I described above? A modified in the ditch quilting going through all three layers, but not visible on the top because the stitches are hidden underneath the applique zigzag stitch?
Thanks!