Quilting for Pauline

Talented Art Quilter Pauline Pearsall recently created this fused quilt top portrait interpretation of her hubby Anthony who is reported to routinely pontificate (in fun) as Julius Caesar. It's a great piece and is due thoughtful quilting. Art Quilting for hire is different for me than quilting my own art pieces. I'm always thinking for someone else, how do I do this piece justice and show off the important stuff while keeping the time and cost investment down for the quilt owner? That's indeed the challenge here. I tend to quilt my own portrait quilts almost like a thread painting so I add no quilted furrows to the brow, no wrinkles. In this case... I want a fairly smooth face surface ( ie few wrinkles) and don't want a bunch of thread. It would be wrong!!! I have NO desire to have thread compete with the great varied fabric textures. So... I want to use very thin thread ( I'm using Invisafil 100 wt. matte finish thread) on his face. There are some 60 thread colors in this line and these small looking spools hold 400 meters each. They do make large spools too. These threads are not easily found... I got mine from ( http://www.softexpressions.com ) and.. I'm doing most of the facial stitching with about 1/3" apart echo lines with only stabilizer behind the quilt top. I'll still have to secure this area when I make the quilt sandwich, but can pick and chose where I do so.. The white head shape below is the BACK side of the quilt top. ( Not a quilt sandwich yet) more to come....