Boxy Stars

So my original thought for this piece was that it needed something curvy and swirly to soften the hard, straight geometric lines. It's a wedding present, so the customer asked for “something special.”

But, for some reason I went ahead and stitched it in the ditch before knowing what I was really going to do. After that, I tried to put feathers in the negative space. Whoa, Nelly! That just did not look right! So, out they came.

 

And, then the quilt spoke to me and I knew right then and there, it needed wide diagonals! My creative side had to play with the direction of the diagonals, and so I switched around anytime I thought it would look better. And, it does!

 

 

 

 

 

And, was I ever glad that I had put in the stitch in the ditch, which made it so easy to travel from one diagonal to the next. Karma!

“We're all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.”

                                                                     Will Rogers

The Jelly Roll Quilt

 

This is a very modern looking quilt, and it should probably get a modern quilting design. What is a modern quilting design? Well, just like the quilt itself, the designs being used on modern quilts today are very simple; straight lines, wavy lines, pebbles and simple circles.

 

But, that's not what this quilt top maker wanted. You see, this is actually the second one she has handed me to quilt. For the first one (sorry, long enough ago that no pictures), I tried to quilt each colored stripe with a different sashing design. Wow, that was kind of hard. 40 different designs?!! When you do that, it is inevitable that some designs will look great and some, well, not so great.

But, my customer loved it and wanted this one done exactly the same.

To improve on the last one, this time I decided to choose just a few designs and repeat them randomly. That way, I could pick my favorites. And, I think the piece has a less “jumbled” look to it, too.

 

Then, I used a swirl doodle fill in the white spaces to set it off.

 

Here's a couple of different looks at it.

 

 

 

Generally, my philosophy on picking out quilting designs for a piece is to keep it simple. Not too many designs, and they should coordinate with each other in size and style. This quilt is the result of breaking that rule!

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.