A "Fishing" Tribute

I first saw this quilt in November, when I was at the QCQ retreat in California. Donna brought it to show and share. She lost her brother suddenly last year and after dealing with his estate (he was single and lived in Montana), she made this quilt as a tribute to him. He loved to fish and it helped her to deal with his death. She said she thought about him while working on it.

The pattern is the first of its kind that I've seen. You use color crayons to achieve the color you want, first coating the area with white and then using color and, I think, an iron to set the colors. Then you embroider and quilt. Although I'm not much of a fisher-person, I do love how this quilt looks and I think the pieced border just adds so much interest.

Have a look...

I tried to do some different designs in each of the blocks to add interest, without taking away from the fun "coloring."

Fishing lures:

I did some quilting inside the fish as well as the meandering around them. If you look closely, you can see air bubbles coming up from their mouths. I chose to quilt the fish as if they were in aquarium, rather than stuffed and hanging on a wall!  I really didn't think Donna would notice--she did though--and thought it was great.

Another scenery type of block:

This was the largest block on the quilt and the first one I quilted since I had to load the quilt horizontally. (When loading a quilt on a longarm, if it is at all possible, you want the backing seam to be parallel with backing bar).  My idea was to give distinctive areas: sky/water and beach/pebbles.

Another sign-type block:

A view of how the blocks went together:

A couple of close-ups of that first block. Trying to give the basket and the net texture was challenging.

Hope you enjoyed the show...

Dory