Originally Posted by charismah

Gerri sent me this Yellow brick road quilt.

It is a richly colored quilt....and I found myself really drawn to the border fabric. I love these colors and her piecing is FABULOUS!

SO my quilting design mimics the patterns in the border fabric.

I know some of you who appreciate my "mini" lessons...or want to pick my brain for ideas..or how I come up with an idea....

I have a had time looking at the overall quilt most of the time. I look at each element....then I look at it as a whole. That is why it is hard for me to do all over designs {sometimes} or pantographs ( I still have never used a pantograph) but with quilts like YBR or T20...I like the all-over designs best. That is just personal preference...not good or bad. Usually even when I do an allover type of design I always quilt borders differently...why? texture. I like different textures!

I am also a person that doesn't ever just want to think..."oh I will just spit out a design"...and be satisfied. I feel like someone went to a lot of work to pick those specific fabrics, they took the time to cut those fabrics..and sew them into a specifically chosen pattern. If they are trusting me to be a part of it I want to do the best I can to compliment "their" work. Now if they tell me how to quilt it..then I do what they say. In this case Gerri said I could quilt it how I wanted.

So that is my lesson..back to Gerri's quilt.....

That border fabric is GORGEOUS! and I wanted to outline the flowers and swirls in the border....in the squares I incorporated flowers and paisleys from the border fabric..I freehand quilt...so for those that want the technical side of things....
I just looked at the flowers and quilted them the best I could...or a version of ones in the border....the paisleys..I took out my chalk pencil and freehand drew them on the fabric first to make sure they didn't look wonky and then quilted them and filled them in freehand. :thumbup: I filled the rest on with swirls...because the border fabric had swirly type designs.

I used Hobbs polydown batting. I use this quite frequently because I like the look of it. I don't get bearding and no lint build up. :thumbup:

I quilted this on my INNOVA. It's a 26 inch long arm quilting machine.
Thanks for looking!

Originally Posted by suebee

YOU BLOW ME AWAY!!! So I'd like to "pick your brain" AGAIN :)
what is your choice of thread?? Thanks again for sharing

Originally Posted by feline fanatic

LOL, I am so glad you posted, I was beginning to feel like I was the only quilting techno-geek, how did you DO THAT fan of Charismah.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

I always love the idea of picking elements in the fabric to emphasize with quilting, however I had boxed myself in by only thinking of outlining the elements with quilting on the fabric itself. To replicate the designs in other areas of the quilt had not occurred to me. Thanks Charisma, you have helped be think outside that particular box. It looks great. BTW I really like that border fabric too!

Originally Posted by mimom

I have a file folder on my laptop with pictures of your quilting designs for reference. Hope you dont mind but you are the best. :)