Zebra print and bows. A winning combination.

I am almost finished with the zebra quilt. It has taken me about 10 hours to do all the quilting, even with the sewing machine. I think it is beautiful, though. Yesterday, I cut a template out of thick plastic for the bows. I wanted the quilt to have interest on the border--an unexpected surprise from the quilter. I hand drew bows and printed out various sizes on the Xerox machine. Then, I cut out my paper pattern and positioned each size on the border. The medium sized one fit perfectly. I traced the pattern onto my plastic template material, and carefully cut it out. Then, I positioned the template onto the quilt border and traced around it lightly with a number 2 mechanical pencil.

Once traced, the question became:  how do I do the quilting. I wanted the bows to POP against the plain, pink border, so black thread seemed the best option. However, machine quilting would not yield the handwork quality that I wanted, so I opted to hand quilt each bow. Here's my final result:

Is that not absolutely gorgeous?!! I love it!! It took me about 20 minutes per bow, which is not a lot of time. I placed one bow at each corner and at the midpoint of each panel.

Now, the question is what to do with the spaces in between the bows. I am thinking adding ribbon shaped quilting, too, but have yet to find the perfect ribbon template. I've tried drawing one, but it's too one-dimensional. I'll get online and see if there is another template or design that I can modify to fit my need.