5 Important Things to Consider Before Choosing the Quilting Design!

today we're going to talk about edge to edge or all-over quilting and whether you sit and quilt on a domestic machine perhaps you're a free-motion quilter from the front or you prefer to hand guide with pantographs from the back or you have a computerized system and the computer stitches them out for you i have five things that are really important that i want you to consider before you drop that needle and start stitching are you ready let's go hey everyone it's tracy at worlds and swirls quilting today we are going to discuss five really important things that i want you to think about particularly when we're talking about paper pantograph or digital designs when you're quilting so commercial purchased patterns i'll run through them quickly and then we're going to look at some quilt tops so that you can actually see what i'm talking about the first thing i want you to think about is density density of the quilting pattern or design in relationship to the density of the piecing that's in the quilt next we're going to talk about scale now scale and density are not the same thing the scale of the design is actually the size of the design and that needs to be in relation to the size of the quilt okay you could have a design that in that scale wise is very large say it's a 14 inch pantograph and super dense you could also have a pantograph that's maybe eight inches wide but it's really open and loose okay which design do you think is going to look better on a baby quilt a little 30 by 40 or a little 45 by even 60. is the 14 inch design going to look right or is the eight or nine inch design going to look more in keeping with the size of the quilt top make sense then we have direction the direction of the design especially when you're free motion quilting you can pretty much do what you want but when you're working with a paper pantograph or a digital design it only goes one way it may look better on a quilt going vertically up the quilt than across the quilt side to side and we'll talk about that in a minute the next thing is style the style is super important you have to get the feel for the quilt top and the sort of style that it's in with its fabrics and its piecing and its design and then choose a design that complements that is it juvenile is it a baby quilt is it a modern quilt is it masculine feminine as civil war very traditional that kind of thing and then look at the fabrics i have a couple of quilts here that you know if they're done with one kind of fabric but if they were done you know say they're done with mostly solids that same quilting design is going to look completely different if it was done in all florals it's the same piecing pattern but the feel of the quilt and the style of the quilt will be very different so that's going to affect the design that you use right and then the third thing or the fifth thing sorry is thread thread is a very deep rabbit hole everyone and today we're just going to touch on it i promise i will do another video where we'll take a much deeper dive into thread but for today it's just going to be sort of a part of the mix it's not we're not going to go too deep into it this video will be way too long and you'll all get bored and you'll shut me off we don't want that [Music] the first quilt we're going to look at is this one that i've got laid across the frame this is a free pattern by uh fat quarter shop and i'll put the link in the description below this quilt belongs to julia and i quilted it for her last week it's 80 by 100 and there's 169 houses in here and two borders so this is a bed quilt clearly and there's a ton of piecing in here so the quilting needed to be dense so that it hits all the seams and make sure that all the seams are safely tacked down so that it stands up to being used being washed and just lasting a really long time i didn't quilt it so densely that i quilted all the air out of the batting so the quilt will still have warmth it's not that densely quilted it's quilted densely enough that it's going to hold up the scale of the design the quilt is really big the piecing is small but the quilt is large so i stitched this pattern out at about 12 and a half inches i use the computer so i stitched it out at about 12 and a half inches deep which is quite large but because the design undulates and it comes out it comes in and then there's an open spine inside it it's still dense even though it's fairly large and the quilt is large so that works when it comes to direction i wanted the leaves to travel up the quilt rather than if they went across they would all be going in one direction which i always think leaves look weird when they're going side to side on a quilt i i tend to like them sort of going up and down so i turned the quilt i turned the backing and i turned the quilt and i quilted it lengthwise this way down the width of the quilt so that the leaves travel up the quilt make sense because that's how i thought they would look the best julia asked for leaves and when i think of you know when i look in the fabrics i mean you can find everything in here you can find curls you can find leaves you can find there's alligators here i mean there's everything in here but the leaf is a nice kind of curvy design so it adds a little bit of movement to all the straight lines in the piecing and it just it just suits it and it looks good for thread i used glide thread it's a 40 weight polyester thread so it's got a little bit of a shine when you use threads that have a shine the light will reflect off it and you'll see them a little bit more than if you use a thread that's a mat so matte colors absorb light shiny colors or shiny threads sorry reflect light so if i'd have used the exact same color in a matte thread you wouldn't see it hardly at all because this thread has a bit of a shine to it it's got a little bit of a glisten and you see it just a little bit more it's called light tan it's just a medium value kind of browny goldy kind of color and it just disappears i didn't want to take away from all the fun fabrics that are in here so i didn't really want the thread to jump off the quilt and do anything i just wanted it to kind of be there and you see the quilt first and you see the quilting second so that's why i chose what i chose with that one this is my skull quilt this is also a free pattern online and i will put the link in the description below so that you can go and download this pattern and make it for yourself truth be told this quilt was screaming for custom work but i really just wanted it quilted and up on the wall rather than in the cupboard i don't have time to custom quilt it so done is better than not done anyways i'm really happy with how it came out so even though it's got large expanses of black background these are all two inch squares all through the back all through the background is all tiny squares so it needed to be quilted densely so that it caught all those seams but the scale of the design again it's about 12 inches deep the actual design this is called paisley park i'll put the link below this was also one of my free motion designs in one of the hundreds of series of free motion designs that's on my channel here so i will find the link for that video and you can go and watch me stitch that out for those of you who want to free motion it you can free motion it so it's large and of course when you're free motion quilting you can stitch it out whatever size you like same if it's a digital design you can stitch it out whatever size you like so i've stitched it out large but even though the actual pattern is large it's dense because it's got a paisley with another paisley inside then there's loops that go around then there's an echo that goes around that and then another echo that goes around that so the design is dense which means it's nailing down all of these little seams but it's still open and large i chose a variegated thread with the colors that are in the quilt here and i just love it because it gives the black some interest without overtaking and making it really busy and screaming and it just blends into the colors in the actual skull and i think it turned out really good here's a little uh tip about variegated any thread really but especially with variegated thread if you lengthen your stitch lengths on your stitch regulators to nine stitches per inch so normally we stitch around 11 stitches per inch right with a regulator if you lengthen your stitch lengths to about nine stitches per inch those variegated threads are going to look so much prettier because the stitches are a little bit longer you actually get to see the colors and the color exchange better than with a smaller stitch length so anytime you want to see the thread a little bit more lengthen out your stitches a little bit it's a really good tip this one the pieces are quite a bit larger there's long strips and it's big enough to go on a bed so i need to keep that into consideration it's not going to just be a wall hanging and you know never get washed or anything like that but the piecing is quite a bit larger than the other ones that we've looked at i do not remember the name of this pattern and i apologize if anybody watching recognizes the pattern please let me know send me an email post it in the comments below so that i can link up to the author and give you a link so that anybody interested in making this quilt can find the book or the pattern it was pieced years ago and i cannot remember for the life of me so i apologize for that but somebody will recognize it and then we can get the link up there so again long strips now this is the kind of quilt where if it had been solid fabrics in black red and white it would look very different and i would want to quilt it completely differently but because it's got this pretty uh gradations fabric and then we've got little circles in here with sort of a little florally kind of thing it it kind of it's a feminine quilt the color the color gradation is pretty so i wanted something pretty so i've got this is called cabaret this pattern and it sort of feathers and curls and it's just sort of soft and it dances and gives lots of movement and lots of curvy curves to some very very straight piecing i did use a variegated thread again it's got the colors that are in the quilt and you see it a little bit more on some colors than others but when you look at the whole quilt as a whole it just blends and balances everywhere again i did the same thing i lengthened my stitch length out to nine stitches per inch so that i could see the thread better and i really like it i could have done this not quite as densely just because there isn't as much piecing in there but that's me i like things dense this is another quilt that i cannot remember for the life of me the name of the pattern so again if anybody recognizes it i do know it within a book so if somebody can let me know who the author is and what the name of the book is i will put that link in the descriptions below so if you want to make it you can this again it's got that black i used a black background and there's all little piecing in here so it needed to be quilted with enough quilting to hold it all together i quilted the design a little bit too small to be honest and the stitching is about no more than about a half an inch apart the problem with that and i mean it looks good the problem with it though is i've quilted it so much that the quilt is pretty flat so it's not going to really be very warm because i've quilted most of the air out of the batting i used again i used a glide thread this is a medium value purple so it shows on the black but it doesn't pop off the black but even in the really bright colors here the purple's not too dark so it's not screaming off the brights it's the perfect balance between the light and the dark and it just kind of dances across the quilt adds a little bit of interest but when you look at this quilt the first thing you see is the piecing you don't see the quilting first and that's what i wanted so it could have been a little bit like i said it could have been a little bit more open um but it's quilted and it looks great and it's always going to hang on a wall so i don't need it to be warm this next one this quilt belongs to my friend liana and i quilted this for her as well it is a bed size quilt it's a rail fence and there is no pattern she just cut up strips and put them together because she's brilliant so what i did with this quilt i know it's going to go on a bed same thing it needs to be quilted enough that all the piecing is nailed down so that it stands the test of time with washing and using and she's got some grand babies so it's probably going to go on the floor and the kids are going to play on it and make a fort out of it so it the density of the quilting is good the design the this particular design is called a door and it's a directional design so on a pantograph a paper pantograph and when it stitches out it stitches out sideways so the little pearls go like this and then the leaf comes out the front and it carries on so the same thing i did with this quilt as i did with julia's quilt i turned the quilt on the frame because i wanted the design to dance up the quilt or down the quilt depending on how she puts it on the bed rather than a cross because i think visually this design looks nicer vertically than it does horizontally and she was really happy with it so the adore it's got paisley shapes little feathers and there's a curl in there and then there's a little leaf at the top so it mimics you know the fabrics that are in here they have those kind of shapes in there again i used i used a glide thread this is called husky and it's sort of a taupey mid value taupe and it's really nice because you can see it but you can't it's not screaming at you you see the quilt first not the quilting and she was very happy with it and it just it looks great then we have this quilt this is actually a free pattern i will put the link down in the descriptions below again it's my pattern that i gave to apqs for their pattern of the month blog quilt and just click on the link and you can go get the pattern for free you can make it in three different sizes and this actually looks very different depending on the fabrics that you use so in this particular sample i used just a tone on tone red black gray white it would look completely different if this was pieced in florals and or pastels we'd be looking at a whole different thing so density wise it's fairly dense because there's a fair amount of um piecing in there could this have been custom quilted absolutely but not every quilt needs to be custom quilted i can't believe i actually said that but i did i'm learning done is better than not done anyway um so i did a curl it's it's got some it's got some razor wires in there the pattern's actually called concertina you can find that on my website comes in digital and paper as well and it's good it's just curls so it's sort of just texture it's not it's not um something specific like feathers or leaves or things like that didn't matter which way the pattern stitched out didn't matter whether it went this way or this way it kind of looks the same both ways just because of the style of the design when it comes to the thread color i chose a medium gray so that it brought some color into the white it's not too dark on the white but you can still see it in the darker colors but it's not too light in there either so it's the perfect balance between the white and the darkest dark and it just kind of goes across and just sort of balances all the contrast out and it just it kind of just disappears it's the kind of thing that when i look at it i still see the quilt first and then i see the quilting last one we're going to look at is this one and i just love this pattern so much unfortunately i pieced it years and years ago i do remember it was in a magazine and i remember that it had something to do with city in the name of the pattern so if anybody recognizes the pattern please send me an email or put a comment below and tell me who the designer is and what the pattern name is so that we can both give credit and find out if it's still available because i've long lost the pattern and i would love to make it again so could this quilt have been custom quilted absolutely and i really wanted to but i wanted it quilted even more so i did an edge to edge and i think it turned out great so the design is modern the piecing is fairly large so it doesn't need as much quilting as say the skull quilt or the um or the one on the other wall there with this with the burst of colors in it it didn't need to be quilted as densely as those because it doesn't have as much piecing in it it is big enough for a bed quilt so you have to keep that in consideration when you're thinking about your thread all right as well with the density because you want your thread to hold up and if you're using i'm getting off topic here but in another video we'll talk about really lightweight threads so if i were to quilt this quilt with say an 80 or 100 weight thread it wouldn't survive on the bed quilted this densely in a really lightweight thread it won't survive because the thread's not strong enough it's a whole other video this i used a variegated thread again because i wanted all the colors from the quilt i couldn't choose which one but i chose a variegated thread that's got all the colors there's lots of orange in the thread that i chose when you look at the cone it's mainly orange and that's what i wanted but i wanted a lot of other colors as well i chose a really modern design this is called apex and it's one of my designs as well i will link for those of you who want to free motion it i'll link to the video below and you can go and watch it and free motion it and if you'd rather have the digital version or the pantograph version i'll put the links to that as well so anyways it's fairly modern it didn't matter which way i stitched it out because this particular design looks the same if i were to have stitched it out lengthwise or width wise a little trick though for you any time a pattern will work it's always going to be faster for you to quilt it out if you put the length of the quilt down the length of your frame and then you quilt down the width it'll be less advances you're putting just as much thread into the quilt but you don't have to advance as many times your rows will be longer but it's still it's the advancing that takes the time right so anytime you can turn the quilt and turn the backing obviously and have it run that way absolutely do so it's just another little shortcut but this particular design works both ways so i do know that i quilted it lengthwise because i do that every time that i'm able to do that and that's that so once again density how dense is the design how densely pieced is the quilt top make a match scale how big is the actual design how big is your quilt top direction is the design going to look better going vertically up and down the quilt or would it look better going horizontally across the quilt load your quilt accordingly style is it modern is it masculine feminine soft and pretty civil war all those things take that into consideration look to the fabrics for hints and clues it will tell you how it wants to be quilted it'll give you ideas take the shapes out of the designs in the pa in the fabrics and find a design that's got the same similar kinds of shapes okay and your thread again do you want it to stand out do you want it to disappear do you want it to have a little bit of shimmer to it so it the light reflects off it and you see it a little bit more or do you want it to be a matte thread where it just completely disappears and you don't see it at all that's it post your comments post your questions give the video a like if you liked it and if it helped and gave you some aha moments and we'll see you soon take care everybody and stay safe [Music] you

Channel: whirlsnswirlsquilting

Views: 8,814

Rating: 4.9497309 out of 5

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Id: b4JUQ0C_1DQ

Length: 24min 10sec (1450 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021