Special Project Reveal- Why Free Motion Quilting matters

     There are many reasons to work on special projects. Like a company gives you new fabric, a milestone event in a loved one's life, a extraordinary inspiration, or a challenge to move you ahead. 
     I believe that the quilting on the quilt needs to be part of the fabric pieced design, like paint fills around the lines on a pages. I look at the quilt and try to determine what the quilt needs stitched in. Personally, I don't like all over designs because they ignore all the  beautiful piecing going on. I realize I am in the minority. When I choose a top, I try to find an overall theme, topic, motif, or expressive line. 
     When Deanna from Wedding Dress Blues posted how she had a quilt that she did not know how it could be quilted, I emailed her and told her I would take it on. I don't quilt for others, but this was a challenge I wanted to gift. 

Deanna's quilt in her blog

     I looked at this quilt as a flower garden in vertical rows. I thought the bright vertical strips would be a tall column of leaves in between the flowers. The pastel areas, I made free form leaf designs that curve and curl to break the linear grid. I did not want to quilt over the flower star shapes, so I did swirls around them up to the edges and made a flower center which I varied for each flower. When this is washed, the star flowers will pop up from the background. 
     I quilted this in Mocha Glide on the top and Mocha Premosoft in the bobbin. I used a titanium needle and no problem with the batik or multiple seams. I did not trim it, but folded into a priority box and mailed it back to her in Utah (I am in Buffalo, NY). 

Whole quilt, untrimmed

Vertical leaves columns

Flower center detail

Back, busy fabric, hard to see quilting

Quilting on back

   She has not received it yet, so I am hoping she likes it. 
I hope I explained and showed that quilting can be an effective design element along with the piecing and elevate the whole quilt. Now back to my stack of quilts hanging in the balance.

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