Oceans Quilt -- Quilting is done!

I didn't quite stick with my sketched up plan for quilting the Oceans quilt -- but I think I'm even happier with how it turned out than I would have been if I had stuck with my original plans.

Instead of going with 'wave inspired' lines through the two outside borders, I stuck with the straight (ish) line theme I'd used throughout. Mostly this choice had to do with worrying that the sudden change in quilting style would feel awkward after so many straight-ish lines in the center of the quilt, but yes, a little bit of it had to do with the time I had left to work on it.

You can see that things aren't quite perfect -- as if I could ever make a quilt that was! -- with a little bit of puckering in the center and a little bit there on the right side, but all in all, I'm incredibly pleased with how things turned out.

It's a little subtle in this picture, but I am absolutely in love with the way the quilting shows on the backing. It really dresses it up in an interesting way, especially for having nothing to do with the pattern of the backing materials.

Oh, and you're right, the backing does look a little different from the last time I showed. Backs are usually made slightly larger than quilt tops, then trimmed to size after quilting. I realized just before I started basting that if I didn't change my backing a little, that meant I would be losing out on some of my pieced section. That wasn't what I wanted, so I stitched the top and bottom sides together, chose a random spot to fold and cut and ta-da, wound up with a quilt back with the batik style fabric on both the top and bottom. I still lost a little of the pieced parts from each side, but this wasn't as hard to swallow as, say, losing the whole bright green/mustard Tokyo piece would have been.

Here's a slightly closer view of the quilting on the back side:

I just think that looks so cool. Maybe even better than it does on the front where I more or less tried to echo the pieced design.

I had to take the quilt all over the place to get some pictures of it. I just like the contrast of something that to me seems so 'ocean-y' lined up with all this grass and farm equipment and such. I'm also a big fan of green/blue/grey color combination, so to me these are very soothing pictures.

Sadly, the mountains are a little too hazy today for good pictures with them as a focal point, but for my friend the once-Colorado-gal, I thought I'd try.

I didn't get a good picture showing the way the top and back work together, but here's a small idea:

I think the batik piece that makes up the largest portion of the backing coordinates well with the grey solid, without being too much the same. I'm really thrilled with how well these came together -- and even more thrilled that it was a happy stash busting accident.

Some grey bias binding to make and apply, then a trip through the wash and this one is ready to go off to it's new home, farther from mountains but closer to the real ocean.