Monday, May 21, 2012

Quilt preview

I made a piece for the SAQA auction that will go in the mail today.  It's a 12x12" preview of my very large piece that is under construction, and I was happy to be able to make it out of preexisting bits of leftover piecing that were lying in a pile in the workroom.

I was also happy to learn a valuable lesson from quilting it.  I had planned to quilt the big brother with free-motion doodles that would largely follow the piecing lines.  In the course of quilting the little piece I realized this was a bad plan -- the pattern of the piecing was so random that the doodles were not falling into place easily.  One square foot of quilting is plenty to find out if you can achieve a rhythm and be happy with the results, and the answer was no.

The small quilt looks fine but I'm not going to repeat the pattern on the large one.  Rats.  Another decision that I thought I had made, and now have to make again.


4 comments:

  1. My SAQA auction piece is also a trial for a larger quilt. Better to find out the problems beforehand but sorry it didn't work out for you! Have you some more offcuts you can put together?

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  2. if there's one thing I'm drowning in it's leftovers -- so maybe I should so another test piece (as soon as I come up with another idea, which hasn't happened yet....)

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  3. I liked the way the quilted piece looks, not close up, but on the screen. Like tiles and grout. Makes me want to lean in and get a closer look.

    I can see that the quilting was very tedious. Overall doodles would ruin the meticulous piecing look. I wonder what you will come up with?

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  4. Aren't you glad you found that out before committing to the big quilt? Love those colors together!

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