platyhiker

Greetings,

I am new to this board. I am currently working on a queen sized Lone Star quilt and am using all the tricks I know to make the points of all the pieces line up exactly right. So far, it's looking really good.

As I think ahead to what quilting design I might use, I want to keep the visual emphasis on piecing and the really nice alignment of the pieces. I often see the comment that various quilting patterns are good for making minor piecing imperfections less noticeable, but I've never seen a quilting pattern noted as being good for highlighting precise piecing.

What, in your opinion, makes a quilting pattern highlight precise piecing? Is it better to have the quilting pattern go through many of the seam intersections? Or avoid doing so?

I plan to quilt this on my DSM with a walking foot, but I'm happy to have the pros and cons of various FMQ design options discussed, too.

Thanks for your input!

feline fanatic

Hi and welcome to the board! IMHO the one quilting technique that emphasizes perfect piecing and any piecing for that matter is SITD (stitch in the ditch). Ditch all those points!! Once everything is ditched, The next thing that emphasizes the piecing is to echo elements. I prefer 1/4" echo either inside or outside the pieced element. Finally the last thing that emphasizes those perfectly pieced points or elements is tight background fill behind the element to make it stand out.

Here are links to pictures I have posted that illustrate these techniques:
Agave Garden, the big reveal

Triangle quilt

Mariners compass LAQ is done!

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

Edited to add, I quilt on a longarm, not a Domestic so all of my work is free motion but ditching is done with rulers. On a domestic with a walking foot, you can still do the ditch work and echo work. For tight background fills there are many straight line designs that are meant to be done with a walking foot that will emphasize the piecing. Back when I hand quilted, I did a lone star and echoed 1/4 inside every single diamond. then I did the background with feathers and crosshatch. This could easily be accomplished with a domestic machine and walking foot by doing just the crosshatch and eliminating the feathers.
Lonestar quilt

Kitsie

Many many patterns fill that bill. I would suggest learning paper piecing, the fold and sew method so you don't have to rip the paper from seams.

Any triangle, star, Flying Geese patterns show off piecing of "points". Good luck and show us pictures of your journey!

Tartan

Welcome from Ontario, Canada. I like to see Lone Stars SITD in the star part. If you want to quilt it all with your walking foot then you could carry the lines out to the edge and do a diamond cross hatch but feathered wreaths done in FMQing are really pretty in the triangle and corner background pieces.

TheMerkleFamily

I am far too inexperienced to answer your question but I wanted to welcome you to the board and was going to also mention that you'll likely receive great advice by the generous and well experienced folks on here - just like the input you've already received from Feline Fanatic

Feline Fanatic - your work is absolutely, incredibly beautiful! Now I must get back to my sewing table and persist with my work on Clue #2 for the BH Mystery - working on my technique in hopes I might someday post lovely quilts like yours! Thanks for sharing.

Christine

platyhiker

Thank you for the warm welcome, folks!

feline fanatic - Thank you very much for your suggestions. It makes sense that SITD would be good for keeping the points in the spot light. I enjoyed looking at all of your quilts, and the Agave Garden one made my heart sing! Love the colors, the design and especially the quilting. I really liked how you completed the lone star diamonds by quilting additional diamonds black-on-black - a very sophisticated look! I also liked how your dense quilting in the center of each diamond really made the outer part of each one really pop out. Did you get all that puff with a single layer of batting?

Kitsie - I appreciate your suggestions, but I am looking for suggestions for the *quilting*, not the quilt (piecing) pattern. (I think it is unfortunate that our craft does not have a term for sewing the layers of a quilt together that is more distinct from the word "quilt". I have found that it is difficult to get on-line searches to focus on the quilting aspect, as opposed to the overall quilt creation.)

Because the Lone Star quilt pattern creates such large areas of background in the set in squares and triangles, I am considering making smaller stars for the squares and half stars for the triangles. A really nice example of this is Wimbledon Star on page 38 of Lone Star Quilts by Jan Krentz. After I finish piecing the central star, I'm going piece one of those stars and see how it looks with the main star and the background material. If I go ahead with idea, I will probably also copy the idea from Wimbledon quilt of quilting a mini Lone Star in each of the set in squares of the smaller stars (and half a star in each set in triangle); it's a neat way to repeating the star motif in the quilting. (And it is easy to do with a walking foot!) The down side of this whole approach is that it add significantly to the amount of piecing - the main star is 8x8 one, so that's 512 diamonds. Adding smaller stars means making a bunch of 3x3 diamonds, so that another 432 diamonds. That's a big addition! (The smaller stars would also use diamonds that have a finished size 25% smaller than the main star.) At this point, I have 25% of the main star pieced, so I will see how I feel about the additional piecing option once I've completed the main star.

This is about what the main star, background and borders will look like:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]584924[/ATTACH]
Some of you may recognize it as a Jinny Beyer Lotus quilt, minus the applique. (Jinny Beyer's applique is lovely, but I know I would NOT enjoy appliqueing huge number of pieces her design calls for. I'd much rather do piecing. )

If any other folks have comments on what they like to see quilted on precisely pieced quilts, I'd love to here it. Thanks again for the input.

letawellman

Welcome to the Quilting Board!!
I'm nowhere near as good as Feline Fanatic (OMG, isn't her stuff gorgeous?!?!?), but in addition to the SITD and echo ditch that's been mentioned, you also need to think of what you're going to put in those setting triangle and squares. Feather wreaths are very common there, but you could consider a mock New York Beauty (drawn with thread, rather than pieced). Or extend the SITD lines on out to the edges, as that would continue to emphasize those lines.

I'm actually getting ready to load a Lone Star myself, as soon as my grunge black backing arrives in a few days. I'll be interested in what you do with yours. I'm planning on SITD, as well as some "fill" work (think Judi Madsen type of fill).

Good luck, and let us see your finished product!!

Jingle

Welcome to this quilt board. Lots of helpful and knowledgeable people here.

Quilt30

I was searching for a specific stencil on line and saw one that you might consider for your Lone Star. I jotted down the item number. It is SCL-517-00 from The Stencil Co. it looks like it can be quilted with the walking foot. I also found a couple that will work for my project.

Sneed

I just posted on the pictures forum a quilt that most of the quilting went against the seams. It is called "Finally, a Pineapple Christmas." You might find the quilting style interesting.