Back to the Sampler Quilt

I did the basic "stabilizing" quilting and stitched the binding on this quilt before heading north.  I finally managed to finish the rest of the quilting, washed the finished quilt and checked for missed thread tails.

The pattern is Play Date Sampler by Nancy Mahoney, found here.
A picture of my finished quilt top may be found here.
I machine quilted rows of curves in each of the blocks, turning in a different direction for each of the 12 blocks.  These were marked using a wash-out type marker, then stitched free motion, hand guided on my Juki.


I decided to stitch leaves and a looped vine in the background fabric between the final two borders.  I did the outside space first, stitching a heart-shaped leaf into each V-shape, with a small wavy loop at each point.
On the inner background fabric I used the same motif, but stitched it in alternating directions.  I find leaves, vines and flowers an easy way to fill in borders without doing too much quilting.