Mar 26 07
Second Experimental Quilt Finished
Remember how I was conducting an experiment to see what would happen if I used contemporary designs in traditional quilts? Well, here I have the second quilt in this experimental series. Again, these blocks were purchased at auction and I then sewed them together and quilted it as below:
Here’s a close-up of it to give you a better sense of the quilting design:
You may recognize this pattern from my last post where I had several green pictures of different designs from the “Innies and Outies” family…this one is the irregular angled swirl, as shown again below:
Check out this wider view of this background design…to me, it puts me in the mind of the McTavishing pattern that is so intriguingly beautiful, but this one is quite simple to actually stitch:
I am really learning some good stuff by doing this. Lessons I have learned so far:
1. If you’re trying to maintain a “traditional style” with the quilting part of the design, you are always safe throwing in some feathered shapes. This is not necessary, but never hurts!
2. Thread choices are very important. In traditional style machine quilting, less is more. (Translation: make thread choices which permit the viewer to appreciate the pattern of the stitched design, but are subtle. This is not the place for heavy or high contrast threadwork!)
3. You can get away with a lot more background quilting designs than I would have thought. This doesn’t mean that you can get away with ANYTHING, (i.e. I wouldn’t use any variation of a loop-D-loop design on a quilt like this and I wouldn’t use a lines and angles design on a quilt like this), but there’s some good room for play here. Stay tuned to this blog because the experimentation is ongoing!
Beautiful quilting. The feathers are lovely. I enjoyed stopping by to view the sweet quilt,loving the flowers.