I am making a baby quilt for a friend. I made these two spiral tie dye tops (about 45" square-ish) ... the colors are kind of subtle, as shown in my slightly dark iphone pictures.

I have about 30 thread colors to choose from, mostly 50/2 cotton from connecting theads... or the scratchy clear nylon monofiliment. (I don't have the good monofiliment) Any ideas for what color and pattern to use for FMQ? I don't want to overwhelm the spiral pattern with thread.

I would not use the monofiliment. This is a baby quilt and you would not want scratchy poky monofiliment thread ends poking babies delicate skin. Additionally the older monos will not hold up to the frequest washing and drying and high temps used to launder a well used baby quilt.

I have machine quilted with the CT cotton. Aside from lint buildup in my bobbin case it worked fine. Assuming you are using a domestic sewing machine as opposed to a LA or Midarm. How confident are you with your FMQ skills? Kind of hard to make suggestions without knowing these little details. If you want to highlight the spiral then why not quilt a spiral following the spiral in your fabric? As it looks like a fairly large, gradual curve you could actually do this with your walking foot rather than FMQ. That would stabalize the quilt nicely. Once you have that done you can decide if you want to do more quilting. If this were mine I would echo the designs coming out in the tie die. Color of thread is up to you and how much you want it to blend in. Audition it by laying it over the fabric.

Edited to add... there is no reason not to use more than one thread color either.

I think Gold would be nice or a Verigated
8-)

Thank you!

Yes, I am confident in my FMQ... my concern is how to make the colors POP or at least not hide the spirals with FMQ.

I am using a machine with a 7" throat or one with a 10". I have a frame but I am thinking I will do this one off the frame - a spiral is tricky on a frame with 10" of throat.

And gosh, my phone takes terrible pictures. I am sorry :-(

Pick one side as the front and quilt the spiral matching the color as closely as you can. If you think it needs more quilting after than - quilt the rays. They are very pretty.

I think if you started at the middle and quilted out in concentric circles with flower petals, it would look nice. I would not use the monofilament because it's too scratchy for a baby blanket.

I would quilt in circles with cotton thread.