Mom & Dad's Native American inspired quilt - done!

Overall I'm really please with how this quilt turned out. It's always so neat to see how quilting transforms a quilt top into something even better. I wished I could have done the curved quilting in the lighter tan areas but I didn't have a ruler big enough to span that section and free-handing it was a mess. 

Did some swirls in the light brown section, didn't turn out too bad I think. My favorite parts are in the dark brown section which I can't photograph very well.

 Even the back looks pretty neat. So they have a reversible quilt if they ever feel like it. :)

Back

Quilt stats:
Size: Queen 86" x 93"
Fabric: Various from local quilt shops & online (Stonehenge, Batik, Michael Miller - Kokopelli)
Batting: Quilter's Dream Puff 
Thread: So Fine #50 in 403-Putty, 424-Chocolate & 425-Brown Sugar
Pattern: Made up by me from a needlepoint design my mom did

Deciding what to stitch

I have finished the quilt for my folks and am very pleased with how it turned out.
Before I share the finished 'masterpiece'. I wanted to chronicle how I came up with the final quilting design.

My idea

 I was really stumped on what to do for the center diamonds. So I went to the Machine Quilter's Resource forum and asked for design help. I got some really great feedback, especially from a really nice lady named Peggy. She provided the sketch below:

Peggy Holt's idea

I was blown away! Incredible. I loved her introduction of curves, it absolutely transformed the overall design.

So now my big dilemma was my ability to execute various elements. This is only the 3rd quilt I've ever quilted (on a long arm or otherwise).

In progress, stitchin in the ditch

I started out with all the stitching in the ditch and straight line quilting and then went through and did a meander around the kokopelli's. Annoyingly I found that I could stitch decently moving from left to right on the long arm but as soon as I tried to move from right to left the thread would start shredding.
Instead of investigating the issue I just plowed forward always making sure I was moving from left to right. Daisy will be getting a thorough spa cleaning before the next project is loaded and hopefully I can fix the problem of shredding thread.

Next post...the finished quilt (woot!).