A quilting friend called me out recently for, essentially, being guilty of unimaginative quilting on my Studio Art Quilts.
Quilting is the stitching that holds the layers of a quilt together. That is true whether speaking of traditional quilts, or Art Quilts, which is what I make. They are quilts for the wall, not the bed.
She was right. For my free motion stitching I was basically using only either stippling or straight rows of stitches.
II started studying free motion quilting patterns, and I decided to be more imaginative with quilting my areas. I still wanted to make sure the quilting was appropriate for my composition and design. For example, I wouldn’t want to use a flowery quilting pattern on a brick wall. Probably not, that is!
I found freemotionquilting.blogspot.com to be very useful. Leah Day is a good teacher, and her little videos of each design she comes up with were all the instruction I needed to get started. I also follow her on Pinterest.
Here are a few details of my pieces since I’ve been working harder on this aspect of my work.
