I had to tackle quilting those big string pieced blocks. Up till now, I 've avoided any quilt with large open areas that have had to be quilted! I figured this would be a great practice piece. I can stipple, meander, echo quilt, do some leaves, make loops and circles, even M and W kind of lines and squares, but not much else...and I seem to always fall back on this type of free motion.
I have a few of Patsy Thompson's free motion quilting dvds, and I used her seashells idea to quilt these squares. A lot of work!! I've done one or two blocks a day, and it seems that I'm getting nowhere...just now I thought I had one block left, but I actually have two left, and the setting triangles to consider).
I can make the initial design, and basically keep going...but then, I kind of lose track and next thing you know I'm making some other echo pattern, or have worked myself into some strange space to fill up, or I've crossed a line or more...but, good practice, and I can see my stitches getting more even and I'm better at re-tracing a line. I'm pretty happy with it, but I think I should have made a different choice. It looks good, but because of all the seams in those blocks, and now the quilting filling it in, the quilt is getting a little too compact for my liking. So I'll have to do some real thinking on how to do the pieced blocks, as a quilt is supposed to have an equal or proportionate amount of quilting in all areas, but I don't want any more heavy quilting. Rule breaking here I come!
