Deciding What to Quilt ~ a weekly series

Thanks for joining me for another post in the “Deciding What to Quilt” series. This week, we are featuring Lynne’s quilt.

She asked me to help her come up with some ideas on how to quilt her gorgeous quilt!

I am going to start inviting some of my quilting friends to pop over and weigh in with their ideas and this week I have asked Tia to stop by. She blogs at Camp Follower Quilts  and also at Tia Cutris Quilts and she recently purchased a Longarm quilting machine and is really kicking butt with it! This is what she suggested:

Thanks so much for asking my opinion on quilting options for this quilt. I saw one like this at the Carolyn Friedlander booth at quilt market and I LOVED it! The first thing that struck me about her quilt was the simplicity of the design and the second thing was the quilting. Carolyn pours in tiny tiny micro quilting.

SO….What would I do????

I think I would work a seasonal kind of thing into the quilting Every other quilt block would be quilted with narrow lines (right side of the sketch). I would quilt the ground with the wavy quilting (in the lower right hand part of the sketch)

Then the remaining trees would be quilted with tiny pebbles to represent leaves and the wavy quilting as the ground. I would match the quilting thread to the background color of each block. I would not quilt the trees at all. That way they would really pop.

Thanks so much Tia………….Wow! Such a great idea!! How the heck am I supposed to follow that? How about a couple of options that are less “custom”?

This idea might work:

Lynne could quilt some leaf shapes in the upper portion of the blocks and a gentle back and forth design in the bottom part. This would look customized but wouldn’t be too difficult.

Or if she wanted something quick and easy, she could try this:

Some wavy  lines in the top and the same back and forth lines in the bottom. I would definitely agree with Tia and leave the trees unquilted, but if Lynne felt like it needed some quilting maybe a wavy type design inside the tree trunk.

How about the sashing and borders?

Since the stunning part of the quilt is the trees, I would consider something simple to not distract from the trees. Maybe some straight lines would look great. Or, once she picks the designs for the blocks, she could use and element of the quilting and repeat it in the other areas of the quilt.

What about thread?

I definitely agree with Tia that the thread should match the different colors of backgrounds in this quilt. If you are getting ready to quilt a multicolor quilt and don’t have numerous different colors of thread, try using a neutral color….such as a light tan or light gray. The trick is to audition your thread by laying it over different areas of the quilt. You want to pick a color that doesn’t contrast too much with any of the fabric. If that is hard to do, I always pick a thread that is lighter. I personally think that light thread on a dark fabric looks better than a dark thread on a light fabric.

What do you all think? I would love to hear what you think would look good quilted on this quilt! Please feel free to comment or email me with your suggestions. Also, please let me know if you have any questions because Wednesday’s blog post will have the answers!

Next week’s “Deciding What to Quilt” post is going to feature the Swoon quilt.

If you are one of the bazillion people who are doing the Swoon quilt-a-long with Katy, then this is the post for you. Camille Roskelley, designer of the Swoon pattern is going to give us her suggestion on how to quilt it. And I will have a lot of pictures and other suggestions. Make sure you don’t miss it!

Happy Quilting Everyone!!!