I finally got around to quilting the mystery quilt. As usual, deciding how I'm going to quilt it is not easy. So I did what I usually do, I started by doing some stitch in the ditch around the main middle portion. Then, by the time I finished that, and since the blocks are rather unique, I eventually got an idea and decided to just go for it. I started by sewing a curvy line down the seam that divides the block from one corner to the opposing corner and I continued without stopping to make some loops along the edges and making swirls inside the squares. I put 3 curvy lines in the inner border and in the outer border I quilted my favorite border filler, from Angela Walters "Free-Motion Quilting" book, called the Swirl Scroll. I have used this design in lots of quilts and it is a lot easier than it looks.
Here is how the back looks.
Here is a close up on one block so you can see how I quilted it. I always have trouble when I have square blocks in a quilt because I usually don't want to do an "over all" design and then I end up doing each block by itself.
How do other quilters figure out what to do?
I love the way the professional quilters can do gorgeous, perfect designs and would love to be able to quilt that good, but it just isn't possible and I am happy that I can do my own quilting and not have to pay for someone else to do it.
One of the quilting guilds that I belong to is doing a block of the month from Minick & Simpson, called Blue Pear Block of the Month. At first I wasn't planning to participate, but when I saw some of the blocks at the last meeting, I changed my mind and I made the first 2 blocks. If you are familiar with that quilt, don't be too critical regarding the way I put my blocks together. I did them the way I liked them, or regarding the block on the left, I ran out of the fabric and had to substitute the with a different navy.
What are you working on?
