My Style of Quilting

I sometimes wonder if my quilting style is boring. Not on one particular quilt but if you took them all and looked at them, would the quilt police note how they all look the same. I hope not! But I do have a style.

After seven years of longarming quilting, I do know somethings about my quilting.

I'm not formal. I love to look at those beautiful quilts that have formal feathers and perfect crosshatching, perfect wholecloths, etc. But I'm more of an ADD quilter. Maybe one day, I'll spend hours marking a pattern, but not yet.

I'm not a microquilter. Once again, I admire microstippling, but I just can't.... Again ADD quilter.

I do want it well quilted. I do like the sharpness of stitch in the ditch.

I'm an enhancer not a star. If the quilting is the first thing you see on a quilt, I didn't quilt it. I like to match threads and add texture. I like the WOW, when the light shines on it just right and you can see what is really there. This kind of style doesn't bode well with picture taking so I don't take a lot of pictures because frankly, unless the light is perfect, you can't see what I've done.

With that being said, here is how I plan a quilt.

I like to use feathers and feather derivatives in the border. Because I don't like to mark, I tend to break the feathers up and put the portions up as I progress the quilt. That way, the border is done when I get to the bottom and I don't have to turn the quilt or anything.

I try to keep the different quilting patterns to three or four per quilt. For instance, on the snowman quilt, I have straight lines, loops feathers (and Terry twists).

I always fill spaces. I never leave thin borders or sashings empty (because the batting isn't stabilized). On a very few instances, I've left triangles or small squares empty but for specific reasons.

I don't like to stipple unless I really can't think of anything else to do.

I don't like to over quilt but I do like to moderate texture a bit. So I'll have areas of heaver quilting and lighter quilting.

I'm still looking for inspiration for the next great filler. Lately, I've filled background spaces with straight lines, freehand, so the spacing can vary. Here is one of the quilts I completed last week.

I did my feather portions in the border segments and then did lines in the inner and outer thinner red border. I tried to do loops in the area of the snowman collector but there wasn't enough space for it to really work so I ripped it out and put in the thin vertical lines. It looked great so I decided to carry that through the background of each block.

With the background being somewhat dense, I added the lighter quilting in the two block borders. Loops in the thin inner border (yes, quilted) and a two leaf feather swirl in the wider border (Deloa Jones sashings inspired). Finally, I did Terry Twists in the squares. Again, the texture is varied but consistenly throughout the quilt.

Finally, I have a double look in the blue border which mirrors the thin sashing loops (carrying the themes through). I simply outlined the applique pieces and secured inside as necessary. Then because I had trees in all the blocks and the border, I did a simple wavy crosshatch in each of them. Again, carrying the theme throughout the quilt.

Can you see the quilting? I must have quilted it.