crocee

How a quilt should be quilted? By this I mean what steps do you use in deciding what quilting pattern to use when doing the actual quilting?

CarolynMT

That is a very deep question. For me, it really depends on the quilt. One of mine "Forest Fire" was easy to pick a quilting design, it was a quilt for my nephew who is a hot shot for the forest service in NM. I did a green diamond quilt in scrappy form and quilted it with red/yellow/orange thread in a flame pantograph was perfect. Another quilt "Portals to the Orient" stumped me for ages. I finally asked a fellow Long Armer on here for advice and she pointed me in a direction for ideas, they were perfect. Still need to get that one done, but have the quilting down just need the time.

Generally though, the quilt style/color will tell me what would be best with it. Other times, I have to work at it to figure something out. If the quilt speaks to me, I can "see" it finished in my head and know exactly what I want and where. If it doesnt speak. I do some drawings on my dry erase board to get an idea. If I actually have the quilt loaded, I will take a piece of plexiglass and draw out what I want and lay it over the block to see if it does what I want it to do.

luvTooQuilt

Thats a hard question to answer.. Usually Ill 'see' it when i look at my top. If i dont, it gets put aside and brought back out again at a later date..

Lisa_wanna_b_quilter

I look at similar quilts and get ideas. I love quilts of the 30's and 40's with great motifs quilting in the blank areas. I figure out exactly what I want and the promptly chicken out. It typically ends up being cross hatched or meandered. I'm a quilting wuss.

sewmom

I have a hard time with this too. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to do and other times I am so frustrated trying to figure it out. I quilt most of mine on my home machine and I do Ok but I'm not great. What really gets me is i will get too far to pick it out and think of a design that would be really neat on it! Oops! Too late! LOL OR i start a design and it becomes so time consuming that i have to force myself to work on it.
I'm trying to collect designs and put them in a folder so they are all together and easier to ponder.

Tartan

I audition a few designs with my plastic sheet and dry erase markers sometimes. Sometimes I use the seam lines as the backbone for my designs. I like to choose a design and use several versions of it on a quilt. The most important considerations is....what do I FMQ well.

Boston1954

Sometimes that is easily answered. Others, not so much. The one that I am working on right now is called "Tropical Paradise". When I think of the tropics, I think of islands and with islands there is water. I am quilting it with dolphins and waves. I also have another one with little owls on it. Not sure how to do that one.

carolaug

I mostly do meandering, but if its a large king size I do straight lines or stitch in the ditch - all the ones I do I do it on my sewing machine. I am thinking of doing more with templates but it does take longer to do

Jan in VA

I hold the quilt top up and ask, "Have you anything to say about this; do you have a suggestion?"
Sometimes it actually tells me!

Jan in VA

yel

jan i can relate .....some times they just speak to you ......before i got the long arm i did some marking for hand quilting and found that those plastic templates come in handy even if you only use part of them .......and looking at other quilts are very inspiring...thanks everyone