99% finished

Transformation is finished except for a trip through the washer and dryer. This is my disappearing four patch design made entirely with dragonfly fabrics. When I finished piecing the colored fabrics, the quilt was a little too small. I added more white all around, but unevenly so the D4Ps would "float" in the white.

This is my favorite block, with purple and black backgrounds for the dragonflies. 

I quilted it by doing stitch in the ditch along all the white/color junctions, which left the larger four patches of all white or all colors as a single, unquilted piece. That made a grid that sort of looked like a plaid background. Then I did a four-lobed design in each of the larger white squares.

I also quilted the lobed design into the white negative space borders, but only where solid white squares would have been had the colors continued. I think of these as "ghost blocks."

The backing fabric is this tone on tone green with tiny, subtle dragonflies and some pretty metallic accents. The blue, purple and green binding also has a bit of metallic sparkle.

I had some bad luck with this quilt. Can you see the dark spots in this photo? Those are sewing machine oil mixed with some sort of black crud. My walking foot was squeaking, so I oiled everything in the middle of quilting this. Unfortunately, it looks like I didn't get it all wiped up and it must have dripped along one quilting pass. I noticed the spots several days later. So far, they haven't responded very well to spot cleaning with Dawn dishwashing soap which is supposed to cut any kind of grease. I'll treat the spots with a heavy duty prewash stick before machine washing it. We're in water conservation mode right now on the boat, so it may be a week or so before I run the washing machine. I'll take more photos after that to show that the spots have (hopefully!) washed out, and to show the post-dryer crinkle. The lighting is lousy in these photos, so I'll try to shoot some glamour poses later.

Dragonflies are a symbol of transformation. This quilt is a gift for a friend who is certainly going through some big transformations in her life. She was diagnosed with the beginnings of dementia this year, and retired from her career.  I hope this quilt gives her comfort and a quilty hug from me. I know she will forgive the oil spots if they don't completely wash out, but cross your fingers that they will fly away!