I've finally basted the crazy patchwork block swap quilt, and am now staring at it trying to work out how I will quilt this.
* I am quilting by hand, using perle #8 threads in various colours and bigger stitches.
* The blocks range from 6" to 11", and some of them have a foundation on them which will make them harder to quilt through.
* The sashing, which uses four different fabrics, ranges from 1.5" to 3.25", and the border is 4".
* The quilting motifs will be lots of leaf shapes, and the odd heart or flower. Think individual motifs rather than the continuous line quilting you get with machine quilting.
* The batting is QD Poly Request, which claims it can be quilted up to 12" apart.
What I'm trying to work out is where to put these little motifs. Anything in the sashing will have to be fairly small and simple, though there's a bit more space in the border. Some of the blocks will be very difficult to quilt through. I've never made a crazy quilt before, I'm not really familiar with how they are generally quilted, and to be honest I don't think they are quilted all that often anyway, just embellished. I don't want to spoil it by overdoing anything in the blocks. I was thinking of possibly a small shape in the centre of each block and various shapes sailing around the sashing. Two blocks which aren't as satisfying visually are the top right (no colour contrast; no foundation backing) and the one beneath the heart block (little value contrast; this was my block, and it has a foundation backing). So perhaps quilt something bigger in at least the top right block, such as a large flower?
I'm also wondering whether I really have to start from the middle and work my way out, or whether I can quilt random bits all over the place. With my last quilt, a 3 x 3 with 2" sashing, I started quilting the blocks, got into a bit of sashing, and then decided to quilt all of the sashing and get it out of the way before going back to the blocks. As well as quilting a cable design in the sashing, I also quilted in the ditch around all of the blocks. When I got back to quilting the rest of the blocks, I found that the quilting must have pulled taut around the edges of each block (or something), because while it had been impeccably basted, it was now as if the blocks had shrunk a bit and it was difficult to get the fabric to lie flat. I wrestled it into submission in the end, but I was left swearing not to make that mistake again.
I suspect that instead of random shrinkage, the main problem was the stitching in the ditch around each block. Since I won't be doing that here, and will be doing little motifs spaced rather in the way you space ties on a tied quilt, is it likely to cause enough distortion while quilting to be a problem, or can I just go ahead and, say, start off with the top right block and then ramble about the sashing and then do the other blocks?