If you have read the preceding parts of this series (Quilt and Stitch posts: One, Two and Three), you know that I get my ideas from nature. A leaf pattern, a stem, wave action, water… And in this case, water, definitely.

Above, this is another example of my little “corridors” or lanes, first drawn with a straight stitch (well, meandering, but straight, if you get my drift…), and then filled with a motif. I chose the curl to hint at flow, eddies of water. In this case, a piece about the desert in Australia, absent water…

It usually takes me a long time of staring at a quilt top before making a decision on exactly how I will go about texturing it.  Sometimes, I will put the finished quilt top away for weeks, before bringing it out, hanging it on my work wall and taking a fresh look at it. In other cases, I know how I will proceed even before finishing the top.

In earlier examples from Quilt and Stitch Ideas, I showed examples of how some quilts “tell me” that the quilting lines or motifs should remain within colour boundaries,  within the lines.

But other quilts call for lines that flow across the whole piece. I carry the lines across those boundaries, because it feels right.

This last image shows how much fun it is to compose patterns intuitively. Looks like critters coming out of the ocean, doesn’t it?