Wave (or Lava Lamp) Quilt Finished!

I am so happy to have finished this quilt!  It is also my last PhD Challenge quilt, so there's that to be stoked about as well.

I pieced this last year using Elizabeth Hartman's New Wave quilt pattern, but I've always thought it looked like lava lamps to me.  That's the direction I went with, both in quilting it and hanging it up to photograph. Tilt your head left or right, and it looks like the waves it was intended to be.

But with the lava lamp thought in mind, I pondered doing something bubbly or swirly with the quilting.  Mind you, I'm still a novice with free-motion quilting, but I thought if I could maybe do a meander with a loop now and then (on right in green, below), it might look something like the blobs that percolate in a lava lamp.

Except that didn't really work when I practiced it.  The meander with loop contained within the shape reminded me too much of a pinball machine.  I dunno, maybe I have an overactive imagination.

So I kept doodling and soon enough the idea of a spiraling loop was hatched.  It seemed to work on paper.  I drew it from the top down (as in a spiral), and I thought it'd be relatively easy to quilt the same way, top to bottom.

Not so much.

The vertical, clockwise motion didn't go so well on my practice quilting pad.  It was herky-jerky and just didn't feel right.  Then I turned the quilt sideways and made the same loops working from left to right, like handwriting.  That felt more natural and proceeded more smoothly.  

Working from the center of the quilt, I "wrote" the loopies, moving to the right along each row between the white "waves."  When I got half the quilt done, I turned the whole works around and did the same thing, working center to outer edge.

But before I did any of the spiral-loopy quilting, I ditch-stitched the white waves. That took a couple hours in itself but was worth it to anchor things in place for the rest of the quilting.

As I've mentioned before, the fabric is a mix of vintage and contemporary.  I like mixing it up. 

Different generations sitting at the same table; everyone gets along, even though grandma's got on a crazy print shirt.  

So, waves or lava lamps, what do you see?  Any clever ideas for a name for this quilt?  How about, "Grandma Invented the Lava Lamp"?  Too long?