Quilts Do Talk!

I made a start on my Scrappy Houses quilt. I pieced this during lockdown and had everything prepared, even the binding. First I needed to cut my pieced backing to size.

Pin-basted for a good half day to preserve my back taking it real easy.

Thinking I was going to do either an edge-to-edge or an overall design, I spent some time machine basting the whole thing to get rid of all the pins in preparation for this. I used a fairly thin (Warm & Natural) batting for a bit of a change and while I was machine basting  I was really quite taken with its flatness. Funny enough I machine basted it in a grid when normally I would have just noodled all over it, so I think my head was already going into a different direction.

This quilt is for us...for next winter in front of the TV. I need this to be well quilted, but pliable and soft at the same time. As I was stitching along I was actually quite taken with how marvelously straight everything was (not the usual for me) and started thinking about the quilting process. Doing an allover design would work great on a scrappy quilt however could also mean that some of my sashings would not appear as straight due to going over at different angles and through some of the pushing and shoving that occurs going through the throat space of the sit down machine. 

Also remembered that some of our well used quilts from years ago when I was just starting off and did mainly overall meanders showed some weakness around the seams in the borders as I did not ditch them. I could, of course, ditch around major seams and then do an allover design...but doubt had set in. I really quite liked the strong geometric look.

Then I looked at my houses...they just look great and I thought that they maybe should be brought out more.

Long story short...this quilt was screaming at me to be quilted in the ditch! So I am thinking that I will SID around the major seams and houses and then do some loose background fill around the houses in each block to bring them out more. Probably will leave sashings blank but put some sort of geometric design in the border. Again, it will have to be something simple, so the whole thing does not get too stiff. Or maybe a more organic border design...I have got some nice designs in the many books and resources that are floating around (which I re-discovered during my recent clean-up of the sewing room). 

So what started out as ‘let’s just quickly finish this’ will take considerably longer, however I am actually quite excited about this. Should be good fun.

Karin