Saturday 13 August 2011

Creating a Quilting Design - Tutorial

This is a close up of the fabric in Bronwyn’s quilt which I showed in my last post.


I used this fabric as inspiration for the quilting design in the setting triangles of this quilt.  You can see there is a mixture of flowers, swirls, leaves and paisley shapes.

I started by sketching some ideas that came to me from looking at this fabric.



Then I incorporated them into a triangle shape – a few pages of sketches were discarded before getting to this stage.



When I found something I liked, I was ready to load the quilt.  I marked the shapes and basic lines with chalk to see if I liked how it would fit into the area I was working with.

Once satisfied, I took a deep breath and started quilting.



It was a little intimidating to work with such a high contrasting thread as it shows every little wobble.  Once I got started though, it was a lot easier than I thought.  I even found that one line of stitching was not strong enough, so in some places I went over the stitching line twice to make it stand out even more.




7 comments:

  1. Lovely work. I especially like the fact that this is an original quilting design. I am surprised the chalk showed up so well on the white(cream?) background.

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  2. That is absolutely gorgeous!!! An artist at work. wonderful talent.

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  3. Your work is beautiful. I wondered if you used a stencil when I saw your original post. Very nice designs and thanks for sharing your technique.

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  4. Gorgeous!!! Your work is always phenomenal, Desley! Phenomenal!!! Did you use a lightly variegated thread?

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  5. I love the colors! Would you please post a picture of the entire top??? It looks just gorgeous!

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  6. I’ve missed you link at Esther's WOW. This is a wonderful tutorial Desley. Thanks so much for sharing; I always enjoy a visit to your blog. Cheers Glenda

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  7. Wow Desley - thats gorgeous. You do such wonderful quilting...and I love the design. Thanks for sharing.

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