My approach to quilting design is rather different than most. Whenever I have a new quilt, I first take a snapshot of it, then use Photoshop and my tablet notebook to draw right on the image to determine the quilting lines. Here is an example on a current quilt I have loaded for Linda, a friend:
This is a repeating single block quilt, so I only need to come up with one or possibly two designs. Ideally, I would suggest an edge to edge design for this quilt, but Linda wanted a bit more special treatment.
The first thing that stands out is that whatever I quilt in the darker fabric areas is not going to show from the front of the quilt, only the back. The only place then that the quilting will show is the light areas, so I drew up a design (see above) that would bring some more interest to the quilt.
The next step in my process is to see how it will quilt up- that is, how the design will actually look once I have quilted it:
The quilt spaces look more interesting, but this will take more time to quilt out. The quilting in the darker blue area is a flower, 0ne that fills the negative space.
Halfway through this project, I was thinking perhaps I should have talked Linda into a fast and easy panto… LOL It would have been in keeping with the style and design of this quilt. But I know she wanted extra special quilting since this is a quilt for her daughter. So I quilt on…
Update: I finished this quilt, here are pics of the quilt both front and back:
and the back:
More images may be seen in this post.
Anyway, I wanted to show you all how I approach everyday quilts-design wise. . I treat them the same as my show quilts, but with a lot less drawing and work. To show you the difference, here is a small sketch of the quilting lines I drew up for my “In thre Garden” quilt. I ended up changing it since I didn’t like how certain sections were looking:
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Before I go, I have a few shout-outs to do: A huge thank you to Karen Kendo for sending the floss for charity. If you have sent floss, but haven’t seen a thank you mention, please contact me so I can watch for it!
Another thank you to Toni, owner of this lovely quilt I did awhile back:
Anyway, Toni was sweet enough to send along the Best Machine Quilting ribbon won for the quilting:
One last shout out to Barb for feeding me a yummy lunch yesterday and sending me home with this ribbon, too:
Enjoy your day! Carla