My cherry blossom quilt is back from the longarm quilter and the quilting on it is oh so pretty! My thanks to Karlee of SewInspired2Day for another lovely job.

As soon as the quilt was trimmed, I spread it out to take some photos. Look who came along at just that very moment:

She was under the quilt just before this was taken:

How about a  close-up? No, not of Coco! Look at the loops and swirls dancing across the surface of the quilt. Doesn’t it make you think of cherry blossoms caught in a breeze? The very essence of spring, right?

The quilt design is called “Embellish” by Quilts Complete. Notice how it echoes the swirls in two of the four fabrics: the green tone-on-tone paisley and the bright pink fabric used in the first border:

I asked Karlee to quilt this with a very pale grey thread. My reasoning? White thread would show up too much on the green fabrics. I always want the quilting to provide subtle texture so I tend to choose thread colors that blend rather than stand out. For me the fabric is always the star.

Here’s a look at the back of the quilt, featuring two leftover blocks on point and one complacent cat:

What about the binding? I auditioned these three fabrics:

The top two are already in the quilt. The third is a stripe from the same line as the cherry blossom focus fabrics, namely “Orchard” by Jill Finley of Jillily Studio. She designs for Riley Blake Designs. Now I happen to like a striped binding. In fact, the only thing I like better than a striped binding is a bias striped binding. So I cut a bias strip and placed it along one edge to get a better sense of how it would look:

The verdict? No contest!