I'm in the midst of quilting an Irish Chain quilt - This is the quilt... http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-90981-1.htm . I'm doing cross hatching along the outer edges of the "chains" Doing this leaves the 9 patches quilted fairly densely, but the large square is wide open leaving about 6" completely un-quilted. I'm using warm and natural, which says I can quilt up to 10" apart, but I just find the big open square to be too much open space (and I should say that I am not a huge fan of very dense quilting, so it's a strange predicament I find myself in). I like the way the cross hatching looks with the open block, and I don't want to just fill it in with more lines. I thought about doing some kind of design in there...but first off, I don't have a FMQ foot (I actually went to buy one the other day, but they were out of stock at my LQS! They're calling me when they come in), and I've never done FMQ, so I don't want my first stab at it to be on a quilt for my Grandmother, with which I am kind of under a time constraint.

Sooo...the point of my rambles? I was thinking about doing just a single decorative stitch in the center of each open block - a leaf, probably. It would come across, I think, looking almost like a button in the middle. Break up the space a little, without taking away from the look of the cross hatched chains. What do you think? :thumbup: ? :thumbdown: ?

Go for it!

I think that'd be perfect and not too much on those squares.

You say this is a special quilt for you Grandmother. Have you considered a pretty hand quilted motif in the white squares? I have mixed machine and hand quilting in an irish chain and it looked great. It doesn't take long to hand quilt a few squares and if you are not comfortable with your handquilting skills try doing big stitch and keep the pattern simple. Lots of ideas on line. You could do a heart or a simple flower and make a template out of cardboard.

I totally agree that there needs to be something in the white spaces. Any design you choose will work great, but it is screaming for something IMO!

LOL Glad I'm not crazy!

And if you have dense quilting on one part of the quilt and sparse on another, it will cause puckering and wavyness (is that a word?) I would try to keep the amount of quilting fairly even over the whole quilt. I will just lay better.

You know, I never did consider hand quilting something in those squares. I like the idea of it. I've never done any hand quilting, though...and am not sure of my ability. Perhaps if I follow the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid!), I might just be able to pull it off! Maybe I'll try out a practice block this evening when I'm watching my show, and if it goes well, I'll go for it.

Hmm...I don't have any kind of frame, or even an embroidery hoop or anything. Any idea of a quick something I could put together at home for that?

We have many hand quilters here who don't use anything at all! Because you have so much of the quilt quilted I don't think you need a frame or hoop. And hand quilting is so easy, it is just a simple running stitch. I jumped in with both feet when I started. You can mark a simple heart or something in the white space. If you don't have a water soluble pencil spray the area with starch and lightly mark with a regular pencil after the starch has completely dried. I have had not trouble with the marks coming out as long as you use a light touch. The starch is so you are marking on a thin layer of starch and the when you wash the marks will come out with the starch. If you use white thread on the white blocks any mistakes you may make will hardly be noticable. Go for it! ;)