Sometimes, while I'm reading journal articles, one part of my mind is clicking away on other stuff. And I came up with a possibly-crazy but also possibly kind-of-cool idea.

Remember the sea glass quilt I made a while back? I never took it to the quilter (well, I haven't been down that way in quite a while, what with being busy.)

I saw the top the other day and thought, "You know, I'd like to hand quilt that one. I'd like something fun and small to do after I finish the quilt in the frame" (which is getting close; I think I have three of the big blocks left to do after the one I'm working on now, and then the border). And I thought how I'd like to do a "swirly" or "organic" type design, rather than the more rectilineal quilting I ordinarily do.

And then this afternoon, it popped into my mind - the backing fabric is that Zen cloud fabric (it's that swirly print in the second photo). Couldn't I quilt the quilt from the backside, using the zen clouds as my quilting guide? So then I'd get the swirly patterns AND I wouldn't have to mark.

Not sure if I can make the reverse of my quilting look good enough to be the "public" side. I will have to look at the quilts I've already done do evaluate how good the quilting looks on the back.

An alternate idea that I also like would be to just quilt motifs in each block - follow the swirly clouds in the blocks that have them, outline the big crystanthemum-type flowers in others, figure something out for the blocks where I'd be quilting around every darn 1/2" wide circle for those that have those...maybe do some sashiko like designs in those.

I don't know. Maybe quilting the Zen clouds on the back is a better idea. I'll have to think about it more.