Line after line

First, let me wish you a very Happy Canada Day!  Hope you get to enjoy the day with family and friends.  The weather is certainly co-operating here in Calgary with lots of sunshine.  It's really starting to feel like summer in these parts.  Yay!

 

The long weekend has given me the chance to get another quilt finished and since it's one that has been around for a few months, I'm feeling really pleased to have it done.

 

Do you recognize my entry in this year's Pantone's colour of the year challenge?
 Yes! This is my Garden Plot Quilt.

I had a hard time deciding how I would finish this quilt top because I like this design so much, I was a little concerned that my quilting wouldn't do justice to it.

Once I have an idea for quilting, I get out a piece of paper,  sketch it out and then I do some "practice runs" on  a test sample quilt sandwich (allows me to double check my machine tensions and get my quilting "muscles" warmed up ;o) before I actually start stitching on my quilt.  This time around, all testing done, I proceed to quilting my project and... think, "Nope.  That isn't looking right."  Time to break out the seam ripper!  This same scenario repeated itself three times.   Yes, that means I tried out three different quilting designs and didn't like a single one of them! LOL



A walking foot with a seam guide attachment makes sewing parallel quilting lines easy.

 

Do you know that feeling of wanting so badly to make something look good, that you force the creative process?  Well, I believe that's what I was doing and why I wasn't "feeling it" with my initial quilting design ideas.  That's when it came to me.  Straight lines.  Time to forego curves!

Single and double lines of parallel quilting on the diagonal make interesting secondary patterns when they cross.

All this quilt top really needed to make it shine, would be to stitch some straight lines.  Each of my other ideas had been too involved and too ornate.  Simple straight lines on a diagonal is all this top needed.

 

The straight lines made the most sense in keeping with my vision of seeing this design as a collection of garden plots - those lines could be planting furrows or rows of seedlings.

 

I quilted on the diagonal in one direction in measured increments across the whole of the quilt, but kept areas open when it came to stitching on the diagonal for the opposite angle.  My intent was to keep things from being too uniform and predictable, so that the eye would keep moving.

 My Garden Plot Quilt (inspired by this quilt, by B Perrino)

 

   The whole idea being that the interlocking squares in various greens are the feature of this quilt - so keep the finishing details simple and clean.  A binding in white to blend with the background and to keep the overall look of the quilt as open as possible seemed the best option.

Garden Plot finishes at 34.5" by 40.5".

 I have my final finish for the second quarter of Finish-A-Long with Leanne.  Yay!