Here's my completed Portholes quilt. As expected, the quilting on this piece was a challenge.
I Googled "ripples in water" and found photos of perfectly symmetrical circular ripples and then wavy broken ripples. Clearly the perfect ones where either taken in a controlled environment or on a mill pond. The latter where taken outdoors where there was a breeze.

Initially I tried to quilt perfect concentric circles, first with my walking foot and then with free motion quilting. Neither method produced a perfect circle so I ripped them out attempts. Fortunately for me, sailboats need wind to move so the irregular circles were actually more appropriate for this quilt. I rather like the rippled circles around the boats.

I tried doing concentric circles again around the sun after I had done all the other quilting. This time I marked the circles out with dots using tailor's chalk. Then, with the speed of my sewing machine turned down, and using free motion quilting, I slowly went around the sun twice. It was much better than my first 2 attempts, but still not perfect.

Here's the back of the quilt. Looks like a very busy regatta!

This quilt is going to my brother who is a sailor. Every time I give him a quilt, he asks, "May I take it to the boat?" And my answer is always an emphatic "No!" because my usual batting is cotton. This time I used 100% polyester batting--much more boat worthy.

However, that doesn't mean that I still am not worried about the quilt being on the boat. What if it blows overboard? With that in mind, I sewed a ribbon loop on each top corner of the quilt and I put a carabiner into one of the loops. Now he can run a line through the carabiner attached to either ribbon loop to secure the quilt to the boat. (Or that's my hope)!.

This isn't a perfect quilt. But it was a lot of fun to make and I know it will be used and enjoyed.