How to Quilt>Planning a Quilting Design

Creating Quilting Designs on your Quilt  

 

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Whether you are hand quilting or machine quilting, choosing a quilting design is one of the most difficult parts of making a quilt – after choosing the fabrics for your quilt, that is.

I think the reason for the difficulty is that it is really a personal preference thing. Nobody can really tell you how to quilt your finished quilt. If you have ever had someone make a suggestion that you have dismissed (or rejected), you recognize the feeling.

When I began quilting, I invested in a series of quilting design books. They include full size designs that can be used as is or sized to match your quilt.

What I realized after I had them was that not only did they give me the design, but they served as ideas for how to quilt my quilts.

When I finished a quilt, I would thumb through the books, looking for just the right quilting design, and more often than not, I found something that was perfect, or that gave me an idea of a way to quilt that I otherwise wouldn’t have thought of.

Here are a few things to ask yourself as you approach creating your quilting design. The order doesn’t really matter, but I’ve numbered them to be able to more easily answer the questions about the Tennessee Waltz Christmas quilt:

1. How much is the quilting design going stand out in your quilt? If the fabric in your quilt includes active prints and several colors, it could be that your quilting design will always be in the background, and creating an elaborate stitching design will get lost in the fabric. If, on the other hand, there are places in your quilt using solid fabric or blocks with large patches, your quilting may show a lot, and you may want to take advantage of some fancy designs
2. How “formal” or “casual” is your quilt? This is probably a matter of opinion, but if your quilt is made for a baby, child or couch at a cabin, you may want to quilt it in an overall design or something fun and light – scallops, animals, etc. If the quilt will be used on a bed in a master bedroom or guest room, you may want to quilt using a more traditional pattern including some cross-hatching, feathers or wreaths.
3. Is your quilt traditional or contemporary? If your quilt is very traditional, you may want to stick with a traditional design. For a contemporary quilt, you may want to try something completely unique and different.
4. How much do you enjoy quilting? If quilting really isn’t your “thing,” there’s no point in attempting to create an intricate quilting design that will take hours to stitch. Better do something simple and get the quilt finished than to frustrate yourself and have an unfinished quilt.

 

The Snowball block was made using muslin so the quilting design would show quite a bit.

Planning the Design for the Tennessee Waltz Christmas quilt

1. There is a large space in each of the Snowball blocks that is completely blank. I did that mostly because I wanted to create the stars between the blocks, and the result was that there were large spaces for quilting designs.
2. Probably because this is a Christmas quilt, it seems to me to be a more “formal” quilt. I’m not really certain, but my guess is that if I had used Halloween fabric, I would think of it as a more informal quilt. hmmm – maybe I’ll try it J
3. This is quite a traditional quilt pattern, and combined with the Christmas feel of the fabric, calls (in my opinion) for a more traditional quilting design.
4. I enjoy hand quilting quite a bit, yet don’t feel the need to fill every square inch of a quilt with an intricate quilting design.

The result is that the centers of the Snowball blocks have a traditional and kind of flowery quilting pattern (pictured here), while the Tennessee Waltz blocks themselves have a very simple quilting design that highlights the movement of the chain that is created when the 4 patches are next to each other.

This is the quilting design used in the Snowball blocks.

Happy Quilting!

Penny Halgren

 

©2009-10, Penny Halgren
Penny is a quilter of more than 28 years who seeks to interest new quilters and provide them with the resources necessary to create beautiful quilts.

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