I've been making quilts for a long time and have made quite a few of them over the years. As with most things, my tastes have changed as have my techniques. The way that I actually quilt the quilts is one of the things that has changed the most. My early quilts are mostly straight line quilted. Then, I learned some free motion work. I also used heavier threads in my work early on.
With the thinner thread, I find that I need to do a bit more quilting and also think about the pattern of the stitching.
Here's a quilt that I made a few years ago for my niece. She graciously let me borrow it to be photographed for my book. She has been using it for a few years and you can see that almost every stitching line has broken.
This is why I have become more thoughtful about planning the quilting on my more recent quilts.
On this quilt, the straight lines are stitched on the bias or diagonal. If I had stitched more lines closer together there would not have been as much stress on any individual line of stitching.
Straight line stitching on grain would also be less likely to break because there is less stretch in the fabric with the grain.
Curved quilting designs also can take a bit more stretch of the fabric, they can "give" when the quilt is used.
After seeing several of my earlier quilts after years of use, I started to be more mindful of the quilting. I try to plan designs that are mindful to the piecing of the quilt top and have also moved to more dense quilting designs and motifs. I have learned a lot of quilting techniques over the years and I have found that I now enjoy the quilting of the quilt as least as much as the piecing of the top.
Here's a more recent quilt with heavier quilting. I thought the background needed a smaller quilting design so that the the individual stars could stand out more and be the focal point of the quilt.
In the coming weeks I'll be sharing the new quilts from my book and since there was limited space in the book for close up photos, will post more photos here and share a bit about each one.
