The picture below shows my never-ending quilt. I have made reference to it several times, as it has been four years in the making. I understand that four years is a rather long period of time to be constructing a quilt, but quite frankly I was afraid I would ruin the top, which I LOVE, once I began the quilting process. Yes, this quilter was deathly afraid of ruining this 48 month piece of work.
Having a game plan is very important to my entire designing process, yes I realize this is not shocking news to many of my fellow quilting peers. Although not written in stone, I prefer to have a sketchy idea of where my creativity is headed, again I know this is old news. But as I stated no design is non negotiable. The picture below depicts my ideas at the start of this project.
I loved the “idea”of incorporating extra points into this quilt. Obviously the initial “idea” did not work out quite that way, and for good reason. If I had placed additional points in the design I would have really reduced the space available to place my feathers. I also chose to situate feathers only on one side of the spine. Although it wasn’t the look I originally had in mind, it doesn’t mean that opting to change direction in my design was a bad decision. This is par for the course when I’m not drawing to scale, and I love how the this aspect of the process seems to bring new revelations to art work. AND Ta-Da, the fairly close to completed center portion of my quilt is shown below.
Currently my absolute favorite part of this design is the bead board. I implemented the ProLine 16 ruler to establish the technique, which not only looks amazing, but is also so much fun to create.
How many other quilters out there fly by the seat of their pants with quilting? Or do you like to have a plan? Let me know how many fliers and planners are out there. And if you’re a planner how often do you deviate from your original course? Curious minds, like mine, want to know!
Lisa H Calle's Blog 