Pets On Quilts 2017 - "Lori & Aliya" (entry 1)

Pets on Quilts is one of my all-time favorite quilt shows!  
I'm entering this quilt into the "Pet-themed Quilted Project" category

And it gives me the perfect opportunity to put together an overdue Finish Report for one of my absolute favorite quilts:

"Lori & Aliya"

This quilt, after washing and blocking, measures 55 x 55 inches.

It has all-cotton top fabrics, a Minky back, and Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting. Everything was prewashed, including the batting, to minimize shrinkage. I re-engineered the construction of Jenny Pedigo's "Metro Hoop" pattern to produce an unpieced ring center for the cameos.

I finished this quilt about 5 weeks ago. It has been a long labor of love for a super good friend from our Florida days. The top was made in 2014, and for various reasons on both ends, it got put on standby a few times. This year when it entered the priority queue, it took many weeks of intense free-motion work to get it all quilted up on my domestic Viking Sapphire. 

I'm in Colorado now, and Lori's in Kentucky. But while we were still in Florida, Lori and I enjoyed tea and dinner and a DVD together at my place every Thursday night after she got off work.

Lori commissioned this quilt to feature cameos of her super-duper awesome canine bestie, Aliya. I like the way this filter choice showcases the portraits: 

I worked hard to develop quilting templates from favorite photos that would reflect her pretty German Shepherd-ness and hopefully capture her personality while working effectively with the way quilting makes fabric puff and flatten. (That process was blogged here.)

 

Lots of detail work happened in those cameos! I can't tell you how many hours were spent tying and tucking tails! It took many sessions of watching movies, that I distinctly remember.

When I asked Lori what kind of quilting she wanted other than the cameos, she said she wanted traditional feathers, bones, and dog paws. My quilter brain was reeling - "Waaa!!  How on EARTH can you put all that together on a modern ring design and have a semblance of cohesiveness?"

But you know how your brain works away at things in the background, and then you wake up at 2:30 am with an "Aha!" moment? Yeah, that happened with this quilt, and when I pulled out my plexiglass oversheet to be able to doodle on top of the quilt, some play time with dry-erase markers teased out the design that would work.

I can quilt a lot prettier than I can draw! Go figure.

And the execution of the idea was a huge success. 

I love so much how Minky backing showcases quilting work:

Wait, I said earlier that this was all free-motion work, but I did use my walking foot to stabilize the whole quilt with stitch-in-ditch and echo lines around the arcs before I started the real work.

I used Aurifil 50wt threads in matching colors everywhere, except the portraits got a subtly variegated King Tut 40wt to stand out, and the paws got a gray contrast Aurifil. (Note: cotton threads can be problematic with Minky backings, as it sometimes grasps the "fur" and pulls fibers through to the front a bit. This will show when the thread is a different color from the Minky. In future I'll stick with slicker fibers for this backing.)

Stitching the binding down on this quilt was a little interesting, as my stitching hand was in an immobilizer due to a bit of a boxer's break that I got when I did a knife hand power break incorrectly while practicing for a Taekwondo tournament.

Aliya loves cats, which is good, because my boy Navarre loved this quilt, and I didn't have to confine myself always to the only room that is cat free.

My kitty was very helpful during some of the prep stages, offering paw marking aid. . . 

(No, Navarre, we're using Aliya's paw!)

. . . and suggesting I include his adorable otter pose in the design. . .

. . . REALLY suggesting I use that pose. . . 

He's a constant photo bomber on indoor shots, my funny little friend (as you can see here with one of my Fiesta Mexico blocks).

Poor boy cries and cries at the screen door now that I have a longarm in its own room that's kept cat-free, but that's for another post of its own.  :D

"Lori & Aliya" was the last quilt to be finished on my domestic machine, which adds to its specialness for me. Thanks for letting me share it in a special venue.

The show link-up is active for a couple more days, so you have time to get a post together if you want to participate this year. 

Huge thanks to Snoodles at Lily Pad Quilting for coordinating this every year. I know it has to be an enormous amount of work.

~*~*~

Linking Up:

Pets On Quilts 2017 at Lily Pad Quilting

TGIFF at A Quarter Inch from the Edge