Quilting Mary Ellen's Sunflowers

Remember this one?  I blogged about it way back and it has sat, untouched, ever since.  Never mind the fact it's sat since the days of my great grandmother, possibly my great great grandmother, unquilted, waiting for some crazy broad antique quilt lover crazy broad to give it the finish it deserves.

Anyway, I pulled it out again a couple of days ago and began to seriously consider my quilting options.  I'm not joking when I say it made me nauseous and gave me a pounding headache just thinking about it.  What if I get it quilted and it just makes me say 'GAG!'...what then?  Will I have utterly ruined it?  Still, it seems grossly unfair to the maker to leave it as it is, so this weekend I'm putting it on the frame, taking a deep cleansing breath and going for it.  I may also pour a glass of red and pop a Xanax...hey, whatever works! 

I'm going for fairly tight echo quilting around the circular sunflower shape (see photo below).  I'll do two, maybe three straight rows of quilting in each of the sashing strips and outline quilting in each of the nine patches.  I'm nixing doing anything inside the circles because the flowers themselves are dimensional.

I've never quilted an antique top, but I am determined to get this done.  It may take me 'til the kids leave home or I drop dead of old age, but I will quilt it.  Wish me luck!