The Quilting from H*%%

This is a beautiful quilt top,a wedding gift from a Mother to her son.
Unfortunately, it was given to me about Christmas time, when *everyone* wants their top quilted to give as a Christmas present. Over the phone, its owner asked that I have it done before January 12, which was her son's wedding day. I was a little dubious. She assured me that this would be "past the Christmas rush"... I explained that I already had three quilts to finish after Christmas.
I said that I could quilt it, but it would be nothing elaborate; I would only have time to do a simple, but nice, pantograph (all over quilting). That was fine, she agreed.
Bringing the quilt, she brought a photo of a quilt she had seen on the internet. It had lots of 'feathers' quilted in the light area. I could feel a red flag rising ominously, but I didn't have the heart to say 'no no no no'. I suggested I could do the feathers, but in the rest of the quilt, it would be just larger, romantic flowers. This would be still quick, I reasoned to myself.
However, when I began the actual quilting, I knew that the large flowers wouldn't look good with the feathers in the lighter area. The design would be off kilter.
A beautiful quilt top deserved better, especially a wedding quilt.
Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I lost my indispensable small scissors that I use constantly. At one point I thought I had quilted them into the quilt itself. The light thread broke consistently; sometimes it broke every couple of inches. The darker thread gave me problems with tension; I had to requilt a LOT.
However, it was returned to its owner yesterday, the day before the wedding. She was delighted. I was thrilled to have it off the frame and out of the house.