bring your Quilt to life!

For many quilters - the joy is in the piecing.  It's common to rush to get the first block finished - just to see what all the colours and patterns look like.  More blocks, sporadic assembly, adding sashing and borders are often accomplished in random order.  Excitement, minor adjustments on blocks and replacing one piece with another is all part of the process.  

What is harder to do - is to create the quilt with the quilting in mind.  Quilters often love making quilts becuase of the colours and patterns that they create.  But once the top is completed and they send it off to be quilted - they are not sure how they want it quilted! How do you breathe life into that lovely creation?

Sometimes the easiest answer to the "how would you like it quilted?" question is to just say - "edge to edge is good".  But after all that work creating wonderful patterns, why add quilting that takes away from the great designs you just completed? It's for this reason that I love custom quilting.  It enhances the work of the piecing and makes the quilt come to life!

Some of things to consider when piecing are:

• Pay attention to the white spaces - especially for blocks that are 'on point'.  Is there something special you want in those white spaces?
• Does the pattern, design or fabric call for a more geometric style quilting or does it need some beautiful curves - or in some cases feathers?
• Is your border large enough for a fancy border.  Borders less than 3 inches are less likely to accomodate specialty quilting

And finally - when inspecting your quilt before sending it to the longarmer - DON'T BE DISCOURAGED by minor errors or corner that don't meet exactly!  These rarely show - especially if your quilt is custom quilted.  Quilting to highligh a block causes a nice light puffiness to enhance the pattern and brings those blocks to life.  Chances are no one will even see the minor mismatches! 

​The rule of thumb is step back 3 feet and look at your quilt.  Likely as not you willnot see any errors.  If you can see an error - grab a glass of wine and step back another 3 feet!  You wouldn't want to spill that wine on the quilt now would you?