By Terry White 2012
Designing a Quilt Pattern for
“Blue Cat with Oranges” Picnic Quilt
The Quilting Design
Choosing or designing the quilting pattern for a quilt top is as important as any other design decision. It should be integral to the design and enhance the quilt. There are several things to consider in the process.
Take your experience as a quilter into consideration and choose a quilting design that you know you can accomplish. The more you quilt, the better you get.
For the “blue cat”, I decided to begin with an old fashioned quilt block called, “Orange Peel”. This is what it looks like.
If you want to mark your quilt with this design, you can see the steps here. The design is drafted onto heavy cardstock. The square I started with is the same size as the quilt block. Next, cut out the design (I used tape on my cutting entry point to make the window shape template.) Then place the window template on the quilt and trace the shape with water soluble marking pen.
I used the orange peel design as a jumping off point for my quilt design. I played around with the design, drawing out different ideas, keeping in mind the need for a quilting pattern for the nine-patch blocks. This is the design I decided upon.
Testing the Quilt Design
Nothing can take the place of testing your designs, materials and set up yourself. Test and practice, test and practice…everybody does it…it is why we have all the quilted blankets for babies, children, dogs and men. We practice and then use the quilt for utility purposes.
Test the pattern: You will see if it works in “real life”. The pattern may be too complex or just not the right thing for you…at this point, you can change it…or it may be perfect and make you very happy!
Practice the pattern: When you practice quilting a pattern, you understand how to quilt it. Then, you keep practicing until it is sort of programmed in your head. This is called “muscle memory” and this is how machine quilters get very good.
Test a variety of threads: The color and weight of the thread will be very important to the design. I tested a blue to yellow thread first, as you can see in the photo above. I felt the colors were distracting, so I am using a variegated orange to yellow thread and this will cast a yellow color over the whole quilt. I like yellow…you may like a medium or light blue color and that will cast a blue shadow over the quilt…which would be lovely.
As you test, you may need to change the settings on your sewing machine to achieve the kind of thread tension you want. Each project is different and the fabric choices, construction choices, backing and batting will all factor into the tension settings for your threads.
Here is a cheater’s tip: I also like to use a backing fabric that matches the color of quilting thread…this way I can use the same color thread on the top and the bottom. This makes it easier to have good looking stitches, because the matching colors will camouflage imperfect stitching.
My next step was to make sample quilt test pieces to arrive at my final design decision. When I quilted the orange peel pattern, I didn’t like the circle in the middle. It seemed quite alright in the drawing, but it didn’t work well when actually quilted. So, instead, I changed it. I began with the orange peel shape and then stitched consecutive rows of quilting to get a design that is relaxed and fills up the space. This is called “contour quilting”. The photo shows my first idea sketch with the circle inside the contour stitching.
The quilting design for the pieced blocks consists of oranges and orange leaves. Here is the rough sketch of that.
Here is the result of my design choices….I like it!
For more articles by Terry White, click here.
And click here for the best quilting scissors.