More about quilting designs

I wrote earlier this week about quilting designs, and how I find it physically difficult to do free-motion quilting on very large pieces.  In reviewing my photos of past quilts I realize how much I enjoy those designs -- they're fun to do, and beautiful on quilts with enough blank space to show off the quilting.  On busy quilts, with lots of tiny pieces and/or patterns, elaborate quilting often just disappears and isn't worth the trouble, in my mind.

Here's an example of nice free-motion quilting that is lovely from the back, on solid color fabric, but barely visible from the front.  Too bad.  I probably could have quilted it in a plain grid with a walking foot in half the time I spent on free-motion mazes. 

Crazed 8: Incarceration (detail)

But for other types of quilt design, there's certainly an opportunity to add a whole new dimension of artistry by creative quilting designs.

As an example, I'd like to show the work of my friend Sandra Ciolino, who is one of the best machine quilters I know.  She has done machine quilting for Nancy Crow and taught machine quilting at the Crow Barn.  She will be teaching again at the Barn in October.

Sandy's strength is not just in executing beautiful allover quilting patterns but in combining several of them in the same quilt.  Here are a couple of detail shots:

Sandra Palmer Ciolino, Nova (detail)

Sandra Palmer Ciolino, Martello #7: Biofeedback (detail)

She also does beautiful quilting with the walking foot:

Sandra Palmer Ciolino, Martello #6: Skyward (detail)

Notice how there's not the slightest bubble at the points of the "darts," where she had to sew into the center, then turn the quilt around and come back out to the edge.  That's a sign of technical mastery.

Sandra Palmer Ciolino, Sgabello #4: Firecracker (detail)

Sign of the week

Piecing again

A couple of weeks ago Judy Kirpich wrote a blog post that exactly summed up what's going through my mind.  She wrote:  "It's that time of year when artists who work in the quilt media start to go bonkers.  Either they have not yet finished their pieces for Quilt National, or they have finished them and are wondering if they should try and produce one more, one possible better than the last."

I have two pieces quilted, blocked, and ready for facing.  I have a third one pieced, but I'm not happy with it.  Decided to take a calculated gamble and start a new piece which I hope will be better.  Maybe it will have to be a bit smaller than my others (you know I love to work HUGE) but I think I can finish it in time.  If all else fails, I can quilt up the one I don't love so much.

I've been using my technique of fine line piecing for several years now, and my mental to-do list of approaches I haven't tried yet is getting shorter.  My first several quilts were all in solids, but more recently I've explored using print fabrics for the very narrow lines.  Twice I've used striped fabrics for both the narrow "mortar" lines and the larger "bricks."  Now I want to use prints for both bricks and mortar.

Like many people in the US this summer, I have heat on my mind, and the new quilt is all hot orange.

Some readers have asked me how I go about piecing the very complicated designs in my quilts.  It isn't at all complicated if you take it one bit at a time.

I start with strips, which I sew into strip sets.  The "brick" strips are always separated by narrow "mortar" strips.  I don't make my strip sets very long, because I don't want to be stuck with the repetition of A-B-C-D too many times.  So I might take those four strips, slice them into shorter pieces, and make one set of A-B-C-D, another of A-D-C-B, etc.

This is a lot of tedious sewing without much intellectual challenge, so I listen to trash TV or the opera and just crank out the miles.  Finally the fun part starts.  I press everything and cut the strip sets into short slices.

Then I find three or four slices that are the same length, preferably with different fabrics or different arrangements of the same fabric, and sew them together to make a little block.

After I've made a bunch of small blocks I fit them together to make larger blocks.  I hate to waste fabric (by which I mean cutting off a quarter-inch or more) so I often use a two-step technique to fit small blocks together.

I find two blocks that are about one brick width apart from each other.  I sew the end of a long strip set to the shorter block, sew the two blocks together, then trim off the long strip set to the exact length I need to match the other block.

Then I repeat these steps to make larger and larger blocks.  And repeat.  And repeat.  And repeat.  And repeat....

Answering your questions: quilting designs

Sharon Robinson said in a comment last week, "Looking at these close-up photographs makes me wonder about how you decide on a quilting pattern or strategy."

Excellent question, and I had to think about it for a while.  For some quilt artists, the quilting is the key element in the art, or at least is equal in importance to the piecing.  One such artist who comes to mind is Paula Kovarik, who draws elaborate designs with her quilting line.  In her day job she's a graphic designer who has been drawing with writing implements for most of her life, which is obvious from the masterful imagery she puts onto her quilts.  I suspect that artists like this think of their quilting pattern at the earliest stages of design, maybe even before they settle on a final composition.

By contrast, there are other quilt artists who regard the quilting as a necessary but mainly functional part of the process.  I am one of them.

For me, quilting is sometimes fun, sometimes rewarding, occasionally an opportunity to realize my artistic vision, but often it's just plain work.  I make quilts because I love piecing, and then I do quilting because the layers have to be sewed together.  I usually wait till the top is finished before I start to think about how I will quilt it.

In addition, there's the logistical issue.  Quilting a small piece is quite a different story than quilting a huge one.  I do all my quilting on my plain home sewing machine, not even one with a large harp.  Since my favorite size is somewhere larger than six feet square, it takes a lot of wrestling and manhandling to get anything quilted.

In the past I have done elaborate free-motion quilting on very large pieces, but the last time I did so, I found it so physically wearing that I swore I would never do it again.  I love the effect on the quilt, but not the effect on me.  It's easier to put a walking foot on the machine, roll the quilt into a manageable package and do a simple grid.  That's my default method, especially since the straight lines complement the straight-line piecing of most of my work.

Fault Lines 4, 2010, 76" x 76" (detail)

This piece had relatively large spaces that seemed to cry out for fancy designs.  I realized that I would be bored silly quilting the same designs on the whole piece, so I decided to use a different design in each little segment (segments ranged in size from a half-inch square to about six inches square).  Probably the best quilting I've ever done, but I don't think I'll do it again.

Crazed 4: Painted Desert, 2008, 27" x 39" (detail)

This is my default quilting pattern, largely for physical reasons, but also because the simple grid echoes the lines of my piecing.  I like to use several colors in the quilting and allow the grid to become irregular.  The lines are spaced anywhere between an eighth- and three-eighths-inch apart.

Shards 8, 2002, 12" x 14" 

On tiny quilts sometimes I quilt very dense parallel lines, less than an eighth-inch apart.  I love the effect, but if I used this on a huge quilt it would never be finished.

Fault Lines 1, 2008, 34" x 35" (detail)

On smaller quilts I can be more adventuresome because the piece doesn't have to be rolled up and can be rotated more easily under the needle.  Here's one where the piecing lines go on diagonals, so I quilted lines parallel to the piecing.  I love the final effect, but it was quite an intellectual challenge to plot the lines to cover all areas of the quilt at the density I wanted.

Shards 9,  2002, 9" x 11"


















On very small quilts it's easy to make beautiful curves with a walking foot, but you have to be able to turn the quilt freely while you stitch all the way across in one pass.  If you stop in midstream, the line will have an obvious, awkward break in the curve and look awful.  I wish I could do this on a larger quilt!

Bottom line, I wish I were physically able to do more ambitious quilting on the majority of my pieces, but they're just too big.  I'm fortunate that the straight-line quilting that I can accomplish with relative ease looks pretty good with the kind of quilts that I usually make.  But in the end, I don't worry much -- I think my quilts are judged on the piecing rather than on the quilting.

Answering your questions: hoop-la

A blog commenter asked recently whether I use a tiny hoop in my daily stitching.  The answer is no.

When I learned embroidery decades ago from my grandmother, we used a hoop for everything.  Keeping the fabric taut makes it easier to do many stitches, and more important, keeps the fabric from puckering because you can't inadvertently pull the thread too tight.  But using a hoop also makes it a bit more difficult to stitch in the center, because you can't reach it with a thumb above and finger below, the optimal position for many stitches.

I don't remember when I gave up embroidery hoops.  I know that I abandoned a hoop or frame for quilting about ten years ago.  It was just too much trouble to keep repositioning the hoop, and you couldn't stitch long lines of quilting without letting the thread hang there at the edge of the hoop for a while till you moved it.  And after you moved the hoop, the quilt was all creased and out of position.  So I started quilting without a hoop, with the quilt flat on a table or sometimes just spread over my outstretched hand.

After I realized I didn't want to use my quilting hoop any more I made it into sculpture.

Yes, without a hoop you have to be a bit careful with the stitches so they don't get too tight, but hey, learning to control your tension is the key to mastering all kinds of needle arts.

I quit using embroidery hoops for the same reason --  I didn't like how the hoop wrinkled the fabric and sometimes crushed the stitches.  It's important to control your tension so the stitches are neither too tight nor too loose, but you can learn that.

When I'm doing my daily art project I simply hold the four-inch squares in my hand.  When I work with larger pieces of embroidery, or when I stitch my four-inch squares together into panels, I often work on a table or flat board in my lap.  Much of the time you can glance your needle off the table and back up through the fabric with each stitch without having to put a hand beneath the work.

As with any form of handwork, you will find your own rhythm and style.  Just as some people hold their crochet hooks way different than I do, people have many different ways of doing hand stitching.  Some use thimbles, others don't.  Some push the needle with the pad of their finger, others use a fingernail.  Japanese sashiko stitchers use a leather "thimble" in the palm of their hand.  What's important is to practice, practice, practice, until you figure out the way that works best for you.

Photo suite 31 -- found drawings