A number of you asked me to explain myself after yesterday's post so I'll try. First, ditch quilting enhances the pieced pattern. I love piecing and I want to emphasize the pattern I spent so much time making. If you look at the dark triangle at the left you can see how rippled it is. The all over meandering gives an even distribution of quilting but the piecing doesn't look so great.
On this block all of the ditch quilting has been completed and the piecing becomes very crisp looking. I have never seen a good job of ditch quilting done on a frame quilting machine so I would rather do all of the meandering on my mid arm machine, (which holds the layers together just like basting would) and then go to my straight stitch machine and do the ditch quilting. Let me clarify here that this is the order for frame quilting first and then home sewing machine. If you are basting and using a home sewing machine for the whole thing, you still ditch quilt first so you don't distort the straight lines of the piecing with your free motion quilting.
Here is another shot of the bubbling and rippling before the ditch quilting is done. I have never been a fan of quilting that disguises the pieced pattern. Why bother piecing if the quilting takes center stage; just make a whole cloth quilt to show off the quilting. (Just my own opinion of course. You are welcome to disagree with me.) I set the standard for my own quilts, and you can do the same for yours.
We got another inch and a half of light fluffy show early yesterday morning so I spent an hour cleaning off my driveway again. I was running out of steam after that so I found 3 smaller bins and divided all of my spare parts into 5 categories, all batik strip piecing, all regular fabric strip piecing, crazy piecing, partial blocks and machine embroideries.
I couldn't resist taking a photo of all of my journal quilts (not journal covers). I made the top 3 in the fall of 2009 and the bottom 3 this year. I hope to have enough of these to cover a double design wall by the end of this year. Why? Just because!
