"Watch out for the Sandbar!!"
This is a quilt which I've made for my sister Ann for Christmas 1998. She has a sailboat and is still learning how to sail and all the things it involves - we'll go out with her several times a year. But the first time she took my husband and kids out, they ran up on a sandbar and had to back out of the mess. Thus, the title of this quilt.
The sailboat blocks were designed by me and paper pieced, then alternated with a water-like blue print. I used a dark variegated sulky metallic thread to weave wavelike patterns in the water portions of the quilt (I had lots of trouble with the thread not behaving - nothing I tried seemed to make it better - since then I've learned some tricks to make it much easier), and then outline quilted the sailboats and meandered around in the sky with white thread (lots of first experiences here). If you look really hard you can see the sandbar in the closeup - it took a lot of stitching with sulky metallic thread to come close to the sandy look.
