My guild, the Seacoast Modern Quilt Guild, is participating in a mini quilt swap with the Northampton MQG.  The theme is “A Sense of Place.”  I am a New England girl through and through and love the ocean. I don’t necessarily care to go in the water or on the water and I don’t love it in the middle of the summer with all the tourists either.  But off season, it’s bliss.

I attempted to capture the feeling of my favorite beach, Plum Island.  The linen seemed perfect for the sand and I had quite an assortment of blues in my stash to choose from for the ocean and sky.  I scissor cut the curves. It was all improvisationally pieced.  I used a rotary cutter just once to make the horizon line perfectly straight.

I started quilting at the bottom. I stitched the wavy lines using my walking foot and then switched to my free motion quilting foot to make all the tiny pebbles on the beach where the tide had washed them up in groups.

The ocean was quilted with wavy lines that became less wavy and spaced closer together as they approached the horizon line. It was my attempt at a bit of perspective.

I used ombre fabric for the sky and inserted a wisp of a cloud. I quilted the sky to suggest a little breeze blowing the cloud away.

I used two different Aurifil threads for my quilting from the Pat Bravo collection.  They were such a perfect match. I’m so glad that I picked them up at Massdrop!

The finished mini measures 17 1/2″ x 21 1/2″.  I could have sworn that the rules were 22″ x 22″ but wouldn’t you know, I just checked and they are 20″ x 20.” I am hoping my inch and a half can be overlooked but otherwise, I will keep it!