Susan recently made this gorgeous New York Beauty top for her granddaughter and asked me to quilt it for her. It's such a beautiful quilt and there's so much to learn from this one! First of all, the blocks are New York Beauty blocks done in a couple of different sizes. This involves a combination of foundation piecing (for the "spikes") and curved piecing, two intermediate techniques that she executed perfectly. Susan used a combination of batiks and woven fabrics (the plaids and stripes) in this top for most of the piecing. Next, if you look at the quilt in its entirety, you can see that Susan arranged her colors to form a red "X" over a blue background. This took lots of planning! We've seen a number of quilts that have blocks arranged to form rainbows or to range from warms to cools from one corner to the opposite corner, but this arrangement is unique. Susan extended the design into the borders by incorporating blocks into her border design along the sides and in the corners. More foundation piecing, more curved piecing! Finally, to make the blocks even more personal, she used family photos printed on fabric for the areas under some of the pieced arcs. The process of printing photography onto fabric has improved enormously over the past few years. It's a great way to incorporate a little more of the recipient into their quilt. I enjoyed seeing the family photos, Susan! I quilted Susan's quilt with a variegated thread in cool colors, using the Clementis edge-to-edge design. You can see the pattern best on the back of the quilt. Because the quilting design was edge-to-edge, there was quilting over some of the family photos. Yes, it is o.k. to quilt through photo-printed fabric. Susan's granddaughter is a lucky girl - such a beautiful quilt!