Manatee Love

This is a fun project that I've been working on this month.  This was started by a custom request for an "Ocean" quilt.  My customer found a picture of a neat quilt in a watercolor style with lots of blues...right up my alley because I love working in blue!  She asked if we could add Manatees, not a problem - I found several fabrics, she chose one and I was set to get started.  Here is my design concept from EQ7:

I started gathering blue fabrics and cutting my pieces - 3 1/2 squares for the 9-patches and 5 inch squares for the 4-patches.  I sorted them into light, medium, and dark and pieced lots of squares.  When I thought I had enough I started laying them out on my design wall:

Uh-oh!  This quilt is bigger than my space!  I pieced the top rows into sections, then took them down so I could work on laying out the bottom:

It was a little tricky figuring out the half triangles because I wanted them to follow my shading...I ended up making some extra blocks to make it all work out!  I was really glad to have my design wall to lay it all out, it really made the process easier.  I just use a piece of cream fleece pinned to the wall, super easy and works great.

Here it is before quilting - I am really happy with the way it came out!  I used a variegated blue for the top because it worked best in the light area, and for the medium and dark used a periwinkle blue.  I quilted an overall swirl design and really enjoyed the process.  A closer look at one of the manatee squares-

And here are a couple of pictures of the quilt when completed:

I think my customer will be delighted with her Ocean Quilt!  I named it Manatee Love for the cute couple in the square.  It measures about 80 inches wide and 92 inches long, 100% cotton batting, thread, and fabric.