Koi Pond

I've got several projects in progress so I haven't anything new to show, but I realized that I haven't shown "Koi Pond" here before.

I made this about 9 months ago, and recently had it out to exhibit at my local guild's quilt show this past weekend. I was inspired by some gorgeous fabric I found with koi swimming through rippling water. It was one of those fabric purchases I made when I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I just loved it. The fabric sat in my closet for a few months, when I stumbled on the same rippling water fabric (obviously a fabric coordinate) but without the fish. I bought another hunk, and figured I'd use them together, somehow.

After some mulling, I decided to fuse rings of the fish fabric in alternating circles to the plain water fabric. I loved the effect, but then had to let the result sit on my design wall while I contemplated border possibilities. My friend Janet spent a long morning with me, one day, trying almost every fabric in a local store to see what would work! Even then, I ended up using something totally different so that even Janet was surprised when she saw the finished piece.

This picture isn't the greatest and doesn't show the quilting detail well, but I quilted it by stitching in the ditch around the rings in the center of the quilt. In the border I continued quilting concentric circles out from the pond circles, overlapping as they would in a pond.