How to choose a quilting design for your quilt?
 

We had a program at quilt guild today. She is a long arm quilter but also quilts on her DSM. She tried to explain how she chose the quilting patterns for her quilts. I can't really describe those, but there were other hints. She does use many straight lines in her modern quilts and many circles and swirls, For her traditional appliques, she often crosshatches right over everything. It does not detract at all from the applique. And not too small or too large in the crosshatch... 3/4 to 1" apart. She rarely uses variegated threads unless you want it to show, like on a dark background. Her thread colors often match the background and you'd be surprised how they just fade over the other colors. Her favorite disappearing colors are gray, tan, and army green. She also said that she crosshatches over redwork since the muslin is usually quite old and probably needs stabilizing. Also, even though the batting may say 10" apart, she never quilts farther apart than the palm of her hand. The larger spaces do not look that well after washing. Also, if the quilt is hung for any period of time, those larger spaces make the quilt shift and droop. I hope some of these hints help.

Good information! Thanks for sharing.

Sounds like it was an interesting program. lol ..... sounds like her tips beats my waiting for the quilt to tell me how it wants to be quilted.

Thanks for sharing. Seems like choosing quilting pattern is sometimes the hardest decision!

Lots of good hints and tricks!

Thanks for that info!

Thanks for sharing...I am a long arm quilter and am going to do some samples of her suggestions to show my customers that insist that custom quilting is the only way to go!!!

Great tips- thanks for sharing with us.

I usually prefer to just do a meander,FMQ, large stipple. I never quilt more than 3-4" no matter what the batting package says. My quilts never talk to me or tell me how they want to be quilted. Maybe I don't listen.

Good old crosshatching. I love it!

I also like the look of crosshatch and it's fairly easy on a DSM with the little bar tool.

Yes, wonderful hints to fill up by quilting brain! Thank you!

Thank you for sharing this useful information. I have always hand quilted but it take too long so have started to machine quilt. It appears that simplicity is the key for a beginner like myself.

Sounds like she understands quilting well. I agree with her on every point. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the tips. I let my quilt top talk to me as far as design. I like curves as they soften sharp edges and points. I use pattern/square intersections as landmarks for my design. I usually use an air erasable (Leonis is my favorite low cost option for this - Amazon) to mark my quilts. A walking foot does beautiful curves. I look for as few of starts/stops as I can so I have fewer threads to tie off and bury. Stencils are good starting points for quilting motifs. I often will use a part of a stencil rather than the whole pattern. I often draw out the quilt section on a piece of paper. Then I copy it and use that to audition different quilting motifs on it. When I find one I like I save it for future use. For example if I'm working with 5" squares in one quilt chances are I'll do a quilt in the future with 5" squares. I also look on line at quilts and pay close attention to how they are quilted. I can then adapt some of those ideas to mine. I don't expect that quilting will be a fast project. Often times it takes me as long or longer to quilt than it did to piece. I use white thread for most of my quilting. Small print backing will take most quilting motifs and hide any boo boos.