That’s the part of the pattern where I get stuck.
Quilt as desired…..
I’ve got no clue what I desire!
So, let’s have a frank discussion about the Intentionally Wonky quilts I just made. There are two versions. Cover Girl, which has the green background, and Sew Good, which has the pink background.
Initially these quilts were going to be sent off to Alloway Quilting and have an edge to edge quilting motif. I hadn’t put much thought or research into what the design would be, but I was sure about having Penny quilt them.
Then I finished Cover Girl. I took a good look at her and decided I want to enter her into Quilt Shows. So that meant *I* had to quilt her. (and this is me talking, other quilters will have their quilts finished by long-armers and enter them into shows and that is okay, just not my style.)
In my opinion, the best way to figure out what I desire is to start chatting it up with friends. Everything on Cover Girl came out of a conversation with me and two friends. I started describing some of what I was looking for, mainly quilting that could be done with a walking foot, and they started throwing back ideas at me.
I used three thread colors in Cover Girl; orange, pink and green. My teal triangle remained unquilted. If the line I quilted added to the “wonkiness” it was quilted, if not quilting worked then it was not quilted.
I stitched in the ditch around each triangle and then echo quilted more triangles in the inner part. The pink triangles each got three lines, while the orange ones got whatever I felt like quilting. Some have as little as two and some go up to four or five.
For the green background I created some “ghost quilting.” What that means is that I quilted the same motif that I did in the triangles, but just in the background. These motifs float around the background and sometimes aren’t complete as they are “behind” and actual triangle block.
I then chose three directions of lines at weird angles and quilted them across the background. These lines stop at the triangle blocks and the ghost quilting and sometimes at a line going in the other directing. The spacing of the lines was randomly generated by a random number generator. 1 meant 1/4″, 2 meant 1/2″, three was 3/4″, and four was a full inch away.
I truly thought this quilting was going to take me 4 days! HA!!!! It took me 11. I am so bad at estimating time.
So now, here I am with the Sew Good version and I am tired!!! I am keeping it easy with this one. One color thread that matches the background. I use the same thread in the bottom even though the backing fabric is a dark blue. It doesn’t bother me that the thread shows up.
I completed a quick stitch in the ditch around all the triangles. I don’t want to quilt inside them and detract from the fabric. But I may do some fun hand quilting in them as time goes on.
I had planned on a simple meander all in the background, but became tempted to do a meander with a 5 petal flower thrown in, along with some loops. I am loving it! I find a meander type quilting to be meditative and relaxing, with the exception that it makes all my muscles in my shoulders and arms cry. LOL! I look forward to some downtime after Quiltcon this week to finish it up.
So, if these were *your* quilts, how would you desire them to be quilted?
Lovingly, Lissa
