Quilting Line Forms Here

Marny's turn...It started innocently enough.  I was choosing thread for the circular quilting lines I planned for my ongoing Wave project.  (The straight lines I had originally envisioned were pushed aside by the concentric circles that result when you drop a pebble in water.)

These four all have potential crossing the Kona snow background and the pieced lines.

It is a good idea to spread your thread choices across the surface to allow you to make a decision with some basis.

But then a new idea popped into my head and I tried it out on a sheet of paper.

Cool wave opportunities rev up the imagination.

So I tried it out on a plain quilt sandwich.  All along I am thinking too much thread and too many lines for my current project.  But the inspiration moves me forward.

It starts out simply enough, and I stay on track at first.

The intersecting lines and spaces are intriguing.

But then I lose my concept and stray from what I learned in the drawing.
 The crossover point is important to keep consistent.

The wave is kind of lost, but it is a learning experience.

So with nothing to lose, I started adding lines below then
above the original set.

Lots of movement, but not believable as waves.  Twisting yes, wave action no.

Quilting lines are important in your quilts.  Their first job is to keep the layers of your quilt together through whatever use and laundering methods you have planned for it.  But they also can serve to reinforce the look you hope to achieve for your quilt.  The scale of the quilting shape, the density of the line, the geometry or organic flow of the stitching and the color of thread all need to be considered when making your quilting choice.  Quilting often makes the quilt come alive.

The Wave quilt is already about lines of waves.  The blocks are simple and there is a relatively large amount of negative space.  So I am heading back to simple lines of quilting.  I'm hopeful the experimentation today will show up somewhere else before long.  The practice and exploration has my mind hopping with ideas.

Till next Tuesday.