Quilt and Stitch… Some Ideas, Part 3

Here is the third part of my little series (Quilt and Stitch posts One, and Two) on how I approach the quilting or texturing (or embroidery) of a quilt.

Once I create a top, or quilt surface, I spend a lot of time staring at it, trying to decide how I will add the layer of texture. Where will the lines be most effective? Does it need a lot of texture? Or restraint?
Stitiching-quilting sample. Photo copyright Andrée Fredette

Those are hard decisions. It is sooooo easy to go overboard.

Machine embroidery and quilting. Photo © Andrée Fredette

Most of the time, I follow the pieced lines (where two colours meet, for example), and texture between the lines. But there are always exceptions. Rules that need breaking…

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And then, there is just the simple joy of meandering on a single piece of fabric, while changing thread colours. I have made discoveries that way! A line of black, for example (on the left, above), serves to highlight its light-coloured neighbour. Relief, in a way… On the right, above, I first placed a little pair of meandering lines in regular thread. Then I turned the piece over, and filled-in that little corridor with a “mossy stitch”, which is a tight figure-eight stitch, using a thick thread wound in my machine bobbin. Time consuming, but very zen.

Machine embroidery and quilting. Photo © Andrée Fredette

Finally, another little “sketch”, a practice piece where I tried out various ideas… You can see the evolution of lines, with their accessory and filler motifs.

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