Whole Cloth quilt - need some input please!
 

Hello to all my fellow quilters ... I'm seeking some guidance!

I'm doing another whole cloth ... a bit differently this time. I've used my machine to embroider 16 circles. They are in blocks of 10x10 ... so the square is 44x44 (that little extra!)

And then in the middle of them, I embroidered another design. You can see it below.

This is done on just the top of the fabric. I've discovered through trial and error that if I do it through all three layers, it is simply too messy in the back. And it makes it so tight, no matter how much I adjust my tension.

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The batting and backing are now layered (yes, I need to baste, etc. so mind the wrinkles LOL) ... I'm trying to come up with ideas of how to join them. I had boxes around the circles with feathers and it just didn't look right. So I ironed them all off.

Some ideas to finish this off would be awesome.

Thanks so much

Marion

With all those circles I would look at straight line & square shapes, like cross-hatching or even celtic or Grecian designs, those that cross over the previous square if you know what I mean
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Cross-hatching would be my preference, but someone will come up with something better.

Can you post closeups of each of the embroidery designs? There might be elements within them that could help us help you. Additionally when you say the embroidery blocks are 10 x 10, I am assuming the actual embroidered circle diameter is much smaller, perhaps only 6"?? How much blank space is between each circle (from bottom of one circle to top of circle just below it and same from say right side of circle to left side of circle that is its neighbor)? How big are the diamond shapes?

You have large circles that are embroidered and in between those it looks like diamonds or squares on point. Some way of joining the two could work: since your embroidery designs line up along the diagonal, maybe you could first join them with diagonal lines. in two directions (creating a large scale grid on point) and then use the grid to help you divide the space in a way that would add texture and allow the embroidered areas to pop above the surface a little. But I wouldn’t do too much in the way of variety of quilting patterns since you want the embroidery to be the focal point

Alternatively, you could echo around all the embroidered areas. Since they are not quilted, echoing around them would flatten the background and let the embroidered areas stand up a bit. And by echoing the embroidered shapes you would be focussing the eye on the intricacy of the embroidery by creating radiating texture around each. Like ripples in water.

Rob

So I did what people suggested, here's some pics to show what I did:

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All sewn together, and then I washed it. Realized that if you don't put soap in the washing machine the colour doesn't come out. Almost had a heart attack LOL

So I washed it twice, then dried it, and now I have a mess:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]598370[/ATTACH]

And the edges are awful

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So I am wondering ... is this because I should have

a) done from the middle out?
b) made sure there was quilting pretty much everywhere?

When I did the "embroidered" blocks, they were only done on the top. Then I put the batting, the backing and used spray adhesive.

Now it's all puckered, and looks horrible! Another cat quilt?

Any other tips I should know before I attempt this again?

Thanks a bunch

Washing the fabric to pre shrink it before doing the machine embroidery is what I would've done.

Cari

I did pre-wash! And dry, and starch! I starched the front and the back

First off, I think what you decided to do was a really good idea to compliment the embroidery and I don't think it looks awful, I also think you may be able to fix it so the wrinkles aren't so bad.

This looks to me like your batting shrunk considerably. I also think you did not quilt it enough. More dense quilting would have helped tame the shrinkage in the batting and while you would have gotten the crinkly look around the quilting lines they wouldn't have detracted from the pattern, they would have looked more like the crinkling you got around your quilted flowers.

Some things I would have done differently:
Outline quilted all of the embroidered motifs, in fact I would have treated them like applique and tried to get that outline as close as possible to the thread of the embroidery, like SID only there is no ditch. Then I would have done a 1/4 echo around them as well.
Densely quilted the background around the motifs to get them to pop up off the surface of the quilt, for this I would have used a very small meander/stipple, McTavishing or curly-ques
A denser crosshatch, probably a 1/2" grid or at least double the amount you currently have and I would have continued the crosshatch in the pointed bits that are around the flower motif you quilted as well as doing a 1/4" echo in them, just like you did in the crosshatched squares.
I would not have left the border areas unquilted.

What you can try now is to spritz the quilt with a misting bottle to wet it down and try to flatten out the wrinkles as much as possible. Let the quilt dry flat. You may even be able to add all this additional quilting after which will help to camouflage the wrinkles you have around the motifs. You may quilt in a pucker or two but I don't think it would be super noticeable.
To tame that border I would do an alternating width piano key like I did in the background of the border on this quilt. I believe the spacing I used on this quilt was 1/2" then 1/4" then 1/2" again, in the corners I drew a miter line and had the piano key quilting meet on the miter. You can see it in the 3rd picture.

https://www.quiltingboard.com/pictur...c-t289353.html

Meow? Meow?

I agree with all the advice Feline Fanatic gave you, but honestly, I don't think it looks horrible at all! If you want to make it a cat quilt, feel free to call me Fluffy.

I suspect it was a cotton batting which shrunk during the laundering, making the top, which was already preshrunk, too large, resulting in the creases. I don't think it looks bad at all. I like crinkly quilts. If you don't want the same result in the future, though, and use a cotton batting, maybe misting it with water and putting it in the dryer before use will preshrink it. (?)