Beautiful..good luck!! It's a winner in my book!

This is not usually a favorite pattern of mine but I must say yours is the most beautiful one I have ever seen. Your colors are glorious and your quilting is magnificent. I think you have made me change my mind on the flower basket pattern.

That is such a great quilt and the quilting WOW........ I see BIG BUCKS in your future...... Happy Birthday too.

Wow! What perfection - everywhere you look, perfection! And beauty.

You are entirely too kind with your praise. But I absolutely agree that a person can achieve wonderful results on a domestic machine. A long arm is not required to quilt well. One area that I'm still not pleased with and feel a long arm would help a lot in is basting and keeping the layers tight. I pin and pin and pin but there is some shifting, like it or not, while moving the quilt all around through a domestic machine. I love how a quilt can be loaded and clipped so firmly on a long arm frame, but that alone is just not enough to sell me on the purchase of a very expensive and limited use item.

What an outstanding quilt. Good Luck!

Thank you so much for your very nice compliments. I'll try and answer your questions as best I can. I typically do not mark my quilts for quilting. In fact this was really the first quilt I've marked. I made a stencil for the little swirls around the basket and a stencil for the flower (made them out of the cheap, clear plastic sheeting you can get at Hancocks). I marked those and then just pebbled around the marked shapes. For my feathers I marked the spines because I'm just not good at traveling large distances on a quilt without a general line to guide me. I'm actually not that great at feathers yet and am a little regretful I used them on a quilt meant to show. One would think it should be simple to realize you shouldn't use a new skill on something that will be judged but conventional wisdom often escapes me. :)

I really don't have a set direction that I normally quilt. I position the quilt so the least amount of it is in the throat space and then that determines which direction I will quilt (away, towards me or side to side). For the border I quilted so that I was pushing the quilt away from me. Makes it easier than having it start to pile up in my lap. :)

This quilt is roughly 70" by nearly 80" I think. Silly that I can't remember but I measure, write it down and then don't think about it again. The larger throat space in the newer machines really does help when quilting, but it doesn't provide a magical solution to all quilting problems. I hate to hear it myself but practice and more practice is what will increase your skills. A nice new machine sometimes makes practice more fun though. :)

Speechless! WoW!!!

Thank you so much! I did have a Bernina 820 but I sold it this summer. I purchased the Janome Horizon and have been very, very pleased with it.

Absolutely beautiful quilt and quilting. You did a great job all the way around.