Auditioning Patterns III

The Seagulls Throw a Beach Party
65" H x 47" W

The Seagulls Throw a Beach Party is done! I will ship it this week to grace my grand niece's nursery. She was born September 12, 2012. She and her mom, my niece, are both doing well.

This was the quilt that I auditioned various patterns for the border. I was concerned that my decision to go with the scallop motif, emphasized by a surround of mini stippling would be far too time consuming. Leah Day encouraged me to go for it, stating that once the scallops were set the stippling would flow rapidly and smoothly. She was absolutely right. The big time consumer was stitching the scallops and removing the Solvy. Once the scallops were in place all that practice doing stippling made for smooth sailing.

Detail Showing the Border
from
The Seagulls Throw a Beach Party

Following Along with Leah Day - Week 28 - Auditioning Patterns II

Auditioning Pattern and Thread Choices on the Actual Fabric

In my last post I auditioned three different free motion quilting patterns for the border of the quilt I am making for my grandniece. The one that looked best on paper to me and to most of you who commented was the one with a scallop shell motif surrounded by micro stippling.  Before I committed to doing it on the actual quilt, I wanted to test my marking technique and thread choices on a block I created from the border scraps.

I traced the scallop shell on a square of Solvy. Next I pinned the Solvy square on the quilt. Then I sewed on the tracing, tore away the Solvy and surrounded the stitched scallop with micro stippling.

The thread choice for the beach fabric was easy. It is a Marathon yellow, beige and white variegated that I used in the main section of the quilt. The tricky choice was which thread to use for the black border. The obvious choice was black. My muse said obvious, but wrong. If not black, then what? I perused my thread collection. When I saw the brown, rusty with hints of red and yellow King Tut variegated it called to me. I am pleased with how it ties the beach fabric with the black fabric and allows the scallop to stand out.

Quilting Along with Leah Day - Week 28

Detail from Seagulls on Parade

Seagulls on Parade
Based on a Pattern by Linda Worland
Created by Gwyned Trefethen

Why do I seem destined to forget that less is more? Linda Worland designed a relatively simple paper pieced pattern of 5 seagulls on sand with the ocean in the background. It worked out to 4" H x 18 W" as designed. There was no border. I doubled the size of the blocks, multiplied the number of rows by 5, added a 3 strip border and modified the design to cope with a shortage of the water fabric.

Parallel Lines

I could have done an all over stipple as the quilting design and it would have been just fine. However, that just isn't my style. Instead I invented an echo series of feathers for the seagulls in a pearlescent white, quilted Leah Day's Goldilock's design in the sand with yellow/beige variegated thread and used another Leah Day design for the blue green background. This in a blue, green and purple variegated thread. Thank goodness for all the practice I have been doing travel stitching and learning how to navigate my way around motifs or in odd shaped sections. It really came in handy.

Now I was faced with how to quilt the borders? When I was designing the border I tried out a solid black border as well as a beach themed fabric border. Neither worked. The three strip border worked best for the quilt. However, now that it is time to quilt it the high contrast of value and solid versus pattern was giving me conniptions. Leah must have sensed my dilemma because her very next assignment addressed my question.

Cartoon Tree

The assignment for Week 28 was to audition several quilting pattern layouts for a quilt top. In the past I have researched what pattern to use. I have tested my preferred pattern on a practice piece. I have never actually sat down to draft multiple patterns and options to get a sense of how they would look beside each other. 

I drew out the piecing diagram of the lower left corner of the border and included a small section of the lower left block. I knew I wanted to use the same quilting pattern in the beach fabric that I had already used - Goldilocks. I also drew in the pattern I used for the blue and green background fabric. The only pattern I was uncertain of was what to choose for the black fabric.

First, I tried the simplest pattern I could think of - parallel lines. My hunch was to set them 1/4" apart. This would certainly make life easy. However, my attempts at stitching in this way often results in the channels looking pushed in opposing directions. 

Second, I wanted to see what would happen if the pattern more closely resembled the other pattern in the border and had a similar density. Cartoon Tree fit the bill. It also allowed the beach pattern to run horizontally and the quilting pattern in the black to run vertically. However, it just looks too jumbled to me.

Scallop Shells with Micro Stippling

Is less really more? My third and final option was to quilt scallop shell motifs into the black strips and surround them with micro stippling. What was I thinking? This is definitely the most technically difficult option. Thanks to working with Leah for 28 weeks I have the skill set to do it. I also know it will take me several weeks of work. It sure is tempting though.