Tips for Choosing a Quilting Design

"I count the stitches line by line and watch the thread record the time."

Greetings Quilter -

Since Georgia Bonesteel, an excellent hand quilter joins us this week for our Eavesdrop on a Telephone Conversaction, and will talk about quilting, I decided to focus some of this month's newsletter information on quilting designs, including some basic “guidelines” for deciding how to select a design.

This week you will read tips to help you choose a quilting design for the spaces in your quilt. These are questions I ask myself in deciding how to quilt my quilts, and are just a suggestion. Georgia may have others to share.

Whether you are hand quilting or machine quilting, the guidelines will help you decide how to quilt your quilt. And some of the same designs can be used for both machine quilting and hand quilting.

The one caution with machine quilting is to choose a design that will allow a continuous motion on your machine – something that won’t require a lot of stopping and starting. If you are doing the machine quilting yourself, you will appreciate saving the work.

If you are paying a professional machine quilter, you will appreciate saving the money; and the quilter will thank you for saving the work.

Above all, quilt your quilt in a way that makes you happy. If you struggle with the quilting because you are unhappy about some aspect of the design, there is a good chance you won’t finish it – and we’re not for collecting unfinished quilts!

Learn now to make double fold straight grain binding with this month's Binding Club selection - Binding with Straight Grain Binding.

How to Bind a Quilt Club and DVD

This month’s Binding DVD will show you how to bind a quilt double fold straight grain binding.

This is a very traditional method of binding a quilt, and

Active Square Patch and above members of TheQuiltingCoach.com and active members of the Official How to Bind a Quilt Club will receive this DVD for free as a benefit of their membership.

Non members can order this DVD individually, or you can join the Club. Remember, the DVD showing how to bind a quilt using striped fabric will be available only until the end of April. Then it, too, disappears.

You may have questions about the Binding Club, and here are the answers:

• These will be all new methods of binding than are in The Ultimate How to Bind a Quilt DVD Mentor
• Each DVD will be the same format as the DVDs in The Ultimate How to Bind a Quilt DVD Mentor - each DVD will be from start to finish demonstrating everything you need to know about the style of binding
• You can cancel your membership any time you would like - no obligation, no hurt feelings
• Square Patch Members and above of TheQuiltingCoach.com will receive a new DVD each month as a benefit of membership. So, you might want to join up and get all of the benefits of membership, including the Binding Video of the Month
• You can order each one separately - pick and choose only the ones you want. There will be a new and different method each month for at least 10 months, or until I run out of methods.
• At the end of each month, that month's video will be taken off the market. Yup, you have until April 30 to order the Binding with Stripes video separately.
  

And now for the rest of the news - -

Happy Quilting!

Georgia Bonesteel will be joining us this Thursday, April 9.

If you haven't already registered, please do. You'll want to get the Telephone Worksheet and see the questions we will ask. That way, you can prepare the questions you are anxious to ask.

Click here to Register for the Conversation

This should be a fun Conversation, since Georgia is a longtime traditional patchwork quilter who will share her techniques and secrets for designing quilts as well as:

I am certain she will enjoy your questions, too. Remember to mark your calendar for this Thursday, beginning at 5pm Pacific Time to hear Georgia Bonesteel - expert quilter.

Also, mark you calendar for April 26, when Scott Murkin joins us. He is a quilt artist as well as quilt judge and physician - in his "other" live. That, too, should be a fun Conversation

Tips – for Creating Quilting Designs on your Quilt

Whether you are hand quilting or machine quilting, choosing a quilting design is one of the most difficult parts of making a quilt – after choosing the fabrics for your quilt, that is.

I think the reason for the difficulty is that it is really a personal preference thing. Nobody can really tell you how to quilt your finished quilt. If you have ever had someone make a suggestion that you have dismissed (or rejected), you recognize the feeling.

When I began quilting, I invested in a series of quilting design books. They include full size designs that can be used as is or sized to match your quilt.

The large open space in this quilt is the perfect place for a "fancy" quilting design.

What I realized after I had them was that not only did they give me the design, but they served as ideas for how to quilt my quilts.

When I finished a quilt, I would thumb through the books, looking for just the right quilting design, and more often than not, I found something that was perfect, or that gave me an idea of a way to quilt that I otherwise wouldn’t have thought of.

The quilt in this example one that I made for Christmas many years ago, and it is a combination of two different blocks. One is the Tennessee Waltz block and the second is a simple Snowball block.

The Snowball block has a large solid piece of muslin in the center with a white print fabric that makes it look like a star.

The Tennessee Waltz blocks include busy Christmas prints that hide any fancy quilting I might have wanted to do.

Here are a few things to ask yourself as you approach creating your quilting design.

- How much is the quilting design going stand out in your quilt? If the fabric in your quilt includes active prints and several colors, it could be that your quilting design will always be in the background, and creating an elaborate stitching design will get lost in the fabric. If, on the other hand, there are places in your quilt using solid fabric or blocks with large patches, your quilting may show a lot, and you may want to take advantage of some fancy designs

- How “formal” or “casual” is your quilt? This is probably a matter of opinion, but if your quilt is made for a baby, child or couch at a cabin, you may want to quilt it in an overall design or something fun and light – scallops, animals, etc. If the quilt will be used on a bed in a master bedroom or guest room, you may want to quilt using a more traditional pattern including some cross-hatching, feathers or wreaths.

- Is your quilt traditional or contemporary? If your quilt is very traditional, you may want to stick with a traditional design. For a contemporary quilt, you may want to try something completely unique and different.

- How much do you enjoy quilting? If quilting really isn’t your “thing,” there’s no point in attempting to create an intricate quilting design that will take hours to stitch. Better do something simple and get the quilt finished than to frustrate yourself and have an unfinished quilt.

Planning the Design for the Tennessee Waltz Christmas quilt

This is the quilting design in the Snowball block.

1. There is a large space in each of the Snowball blocks that is completely blank. I did that mostly because I wanted to create the stars between the blocks, and the result was that there were large spaces for quilting designs.

2. Probably because this is a Christmas quilt, it seems to me to be a more “formal” quilt. I’m not really certain, but my guess is that if I had used Halloween fabric, I would think of it as a more informal quilt. hmmm – maybe I’ll try it.

3. This is quite a traditional quilt pattern, and combined with the Christmas feel of the fabric, calls (in my opinion) for a more traditional quilting design.

4. I enjoy hand quilting quite a bit, yet don’t feel the need to fill every square inch of a quilt with an intricate quilting design. The result is that the centers of the Snowball blocks have a traditional and kind of flowery quilting pattern (pictured here), while the Tennessee Waltz blocks themselves have a very simple quilting design that highlights the movement of the chain that is created when the 4 patches are next to each other.

Christmas Tennessee Waltz Quilt

Postcard Quilts for the Troops

July 4th Roundup Next - Deadline MAY 20!

Penny's Postcard Posse has sent more than 15,000 fabric postcards to our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the hospital in Germany.

As quilters, we know what those postcards mean to the men and women who recieve them. Some who get them receive no other mail from home. And for all of them, it's a reminder of the wonderful freedoms they are fighting for and the comforts they will enjoy when they return home.

The 4th of July Roundup is in full swing - the deadline is May 20!

It's not too early to start making patriotic cards for our 4th of July Roundup. This will mark our 4th Year! Check out the postcard patterns on www.QuiltBlockLibrary.com I will continue to add designs, and patterns for the fabric postcards are always free.

Remember the Birthday Roundup - Diane had a great idea to send over a package of Birthday postcards that can be handed to soldiers the day of their birthday! What a great idea.

So, we've set up a deadline of August 10, and there is plenty of time to get some postcards made by then. She will send over a big box and the soldier "in charge" can hand them out as birthdays arrive. I will be adding birthday-themed postcard designs to www.QuiltBlockLibrary.com, so keep on checkin'

To make the 4th of July deadline, get your cards to Diane by May 20.

Please send your cards to:
Diane Malaznik
14215 Westmore St.
Livonia, MI 48154-4149

Diane is doing a fabulous job keeping the pictures updated, and if you have sent cards in, let your friends and family know that they can see pictures of them here: www.Fabric-Postcards.com

Remember you can get FREE postcard patterns at: www.QuiltBlockLibrary.com

Special Note - we are in the process of changing the Picture Gallery on the Fabric-Postcards.com site. It may take a few days, so bear with us. Not to worry - We have all of the pictures and will get everything squared away soon.

Featured Block in Video - Rocket Ship Quilt Block

Download the Rocketship Quilt Block Pattern

The April selection of free quilt block patterns includes a variety of 4 patch quilt blocks, ranging from the easy to make to some that are a little more complex.

Click here to download your April FREE quilt block patterns

Bread Basket	Broken Dishes	Cats & Mice	Cherokee Spirit
Churn Dash	Shady Pine	Signature	Swallow
	Tippecanoe	Twilight

Click here to download your April FREE quilt block patterns