Hand Quilt Design Options
 

So, I'm embarking on my first quilt. I have almost all of top done, so I'll be doing the quilting soon enough. This is for my daughter's bed (she's 7) so it can be fun...and it has a ton of bright and bold colors with some white panels in between. Its mostly purple and pink patterns. There will be three lines of purple going down the white panels. I want more quilting than the original inspiration had:
http://www.pbteen.com/products/punch...iew-all-quilts

I'm interested in the pebble or the meander pattern for the top. Since I am hand quilting this, it will be time intensive regardless. Was curious if the pebbling would be a lot more effort than the meander? I feel that if I use a quarter as my guide, I can be more consistent with the pebble pattern. I think I like the pebble more, but like the meander as well.

I would appreciate input from the experts here for this overall pattern.

Hi - I would do a simple design in the rectangles (maybe a flower with leaf on each side) and a cable in the long white strips. I have not heard of pebble or meandering for hand quilting.

Not a hand quilter so I can't tell you if pebbling or meandering is a good idea to do by hand. I can say though that pebbling is typically done with pebbles in varying sizes.

Personally ... I like Barb's idea of running a cable or braid up the white strips!! That will give you more quilting than just the single line that is shown. It's a fairly easy pattern both to mark and to quilt - but has a lot of punch to it and will make those white strips sparkle. You can use either white or purple thread to quilt.

As for the colored blocks ... you can either treat each colored block separately, or treat the whole colored "stripe" as a single item (in which case perhaps a matching cable or braid quilted with white thread?). Another good choice to work either as single blocks or the whole stripe would be clam shells which would compliment the cable/braid.

I personally would not use an all over design for the whole quilt. I would treat the colors and white as separate items and quilt each accordingly.

I'm glad you're hand quilting, but pebbling would not be a good design choice - hand quilting takes a long time, pebbling would take a lifetime or longer. Meandering would go a little faster, but

I second what Barb and Sue say - simple patterns, so you can get the project finished and go onto the next.

Janet

Well, since it is for a little girl, how about shapes of things she likes. You can google coloring pages or clipart for easy shapes like teddy bears, or kittens and then print them out to make your templates.

I have hand quilted an all over meander. It was rather structured as it was a stencil but still gave that effect. Had flowers and leaves as well as the all-over 'vine'. It really wasn't too bad to do but not sure that I'd do that for the quilt you are making. I agree with the others that suggested a cable in the white strips. Then again, I'm partial to cable designs. I'd probably also treat each block with a different design or several simple ones rotated throughout the quilt. Those little girls are tough! Too old for baby stuff but you don't want to be too 'adult' either. The only request I got from my, at the time, 8 yr. old niece was 'no hearts Aunt Kim'! Did a combo of the above meander in the body of the quilt, but it was pinwheels kind of in a 'kite tail' pattern so it lent itself to that (at least to me!) and then cables in the borders.

I do handquilting and I have used a simple stipple, meandering stitch on larger quilts. I don't work so I can finish one quickly.
Pebbling takes so long. A larger meandering would work if I were doing it. Great suggestions you have gotten already as well. Good luck deciding. Here's my meandering and the quilt I did it on. I used variagated thread on black on this one.

This is a little smaller meandering, you can make it larger. I don't use a tencil, just sew on my own, but there are several stippling/meandering stencils at LQs's......
Hope you show us what you decided. PIctures are great.

love the ideas, but i failed to mention that i'm clueless on terms or technique. seriously just bought a sewing machine last year, and all i've made with it are christmas bags...and last time i did any embroidery was cross-stiching when i was 8 with my gramma :) that being said, i can learn! so the white width is 10" ....i want to minimize the non-quilted portion just to avoid excessive wear and tear. what kind of cable design would you suggest? remember, i'm clueless and can't easily envision quilt patterns. i think it needs to be in purple since i want her to have two quilts (one for now and one when she is in high school so she can flip it over). that being said, i want to minimize the "age appropriate" motifs since this could be the first and last quilt i ever made, but also need simplicity in a pattern. since i want this to be reversible, i think the colored panels all have to be treated the same. so, maybe purple thread on the cable-ish design on the white panel, and white thread on the colored panels?

Ok, I know understand what a clamshell pattern is (trust me, you don't want to know what I was thinking as I was way way off!). Anyways, looking at these as options (in the white drawn image), which suit the colored panel best?

http://www.anitashackelford.com/quil...emplates.html#

If you do not do it over the entire front of the quilt, how do you "end" the column cleanly? It appears that the "7 treasures" pattern is the only one that would feel "finished" near the border of the colored panels. Does that make sense?

Now, as for the white space, I have googled and simply don't know what I'm looking for...does anyone have any examples of a braid/column quilt pattern?