Wow, did I fill pages of
doodles before coming up with a plan for this piece! I even started
quilting one plan, only to rip out the stitches when I realized
“Well, that doesn't look good!”
This plan came about when
I realized I could not stitch in the ditch around the aqua squares,
because some seams were pressed to the aqua, some to the white. It
just wouldn't look right. So, I thought I would quilt a star into
each aqua square, and then carry them into the white space, kind of
like ghost stars. It definitely helped that the piecing increments
were easy...2 inch, then 3 inch and 4 inch star spaces. This meant I
could stitch the echo lines using a ruler and minimal pre-marking.
I explained to the
customer that I would not quilt on the circles and petal shapes until
the background fill was finished. We used two layers of batting –
wool over a cotton/poly blend – and I hoped that would be enough.
In the end, we decided to quilt a petal shape into the large center
circle, as it was 4 ½ inches across. The smaller shapes had enough
fill from the wool batting to hold up on their own.
I'm crazy for the texture
this piece has, from the ½ inch echo lines and the double batting!
Nothing
great was ever
achieved
without enthusiasm.
Emerson
