Bubbling With Ideas

I'm working away on little Malcolm's Bubbles quilt. The quilting is coming along. So far we have stitch in the ditch around the bubbles and some straight lines on the dark grey side:

Next, I'm mulling over what to do with the bubbles. Pulled out the trial quilting sheets and the dry erase markers and played with a variety of motifs:

Then, the tough part. That darn negative space in the lighter grey. There's a lot of it!

1) Straight lines like in the dark grey?

2) Echo the bubbles?

3) Swirls and pebbles?

4) Break up the space with 'clouds' of different motifs?

Another go at sectioning

Thoughts? Ideas? Opinions? Have a go!

Oh Those Quilting Decisions

Carsick, my Scrappy Trip quilt, is basted and ready for quilting, but I'm not quite sure yet what to do about the quilting.

I pulled out my plexiglass trial quilting sheets and some dry erase markers so I could play around with some quilting ideas.

Option 1: Straight-line on the diagonal making a partial grid:

Option 2: Full grid: 

Option 3: Echo grid: 

Option 4: Orange peel rows:

Option 5: Partial orange peel grid:

Option 6: Full orange peel grid:

Option 7: Not sure what to call these - curved squares?: 

Option 8: Crossover swirls:

What do you think? So many choices!

Bright Stripes - A Work in Progress

If you missed my Sew Sisters giveaway post, check it out. It's simply Scrumptious (couldn't resist)! Great book and wine recommendations so far!

***

I always like reading about people's thought processes so I thought I'd share what quilting designs I've been considering for Bright Stripes, my test of my soon-to-be Falling For Stripes pattern. Figuring out the quilting used to intimidate me -- so many options! -- but now I rather enjoy it because I can test out ideas using the trial quilting sheets before committing.

For the original Falling For Stripes, I did square spirals in all of the stripe blocks and different straight line motifs in the yellow and orange sections. For the pink, burgundy and purple sections, I echoed the blocks for the most part about 1" apart. 

For Bright Stripes, I wanted a different feel with the quilting. Something that would soften or contrast with the feel of the crisp white background and rainbow stripe squares. Apologies for the photos -- I can't use the flash with the trial quilting sheets.

Some spiral quilting?

Yes, but I don't like how it goes off the edge. Different edge treatment?

I like the straight lines, but the corner is not doing it for me. Maybe take the spirals all the way to the corner to separate the straight lines?

Yes, I think so. I did the spirals on all the blocks, but found that there's a lot of space along the edges that I didn't want to be all straight lines. Back under the trial quilting sheet to play some more. 

That's looking better. Come back Friday when I host TGIFF! to see what I decided to do. You are also most welcome to link up one (or more!) of your own recent finishes.

I'm linking in to WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network and to W.i.P. Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Thanks Monika and Lee for hosting such great linkies!

New Favourite Tool - Trial Quilting Sheets

A few weeks ago, Lynette from What a Hoot! had a post about using what she calls "Trial Sheets" to test out quilting patterns on your quilts. I always have a hard time visualizing what the quilting is going to look like on the quilt so when I saw her tool, I felt like yelling, "Eureka!" (I didn't though ;) ). Well, I tried it out myself with Project Y and I love it!

So here's what I did. I picked two of the thinest and cheapest acrylic sheets there were at Home Depot - one 11" by 14" and one 24" by 48". I may go and get a larger size down the road, but I think these will do just fine for now. Lynette bought some of those nice duct tapes to 'bind' her acrylic sheets (so the edges don't snag the quilt). She then cut the duct tape lengthwise down the middle so that it made a thin binding around the edge of the acrylic sheets. When I went into our workshop to get our duct tape though, I saw that we had some fun yellow electrical tape that was about 3/4" wide. Perfect! This way, I wouldn't have to cut it lengthwise to make it thinner. It took maybe 10 minutes to tape up the sides of the acrylic with Daniel's 'help'.

I already had some dry erase markers in red, blue, black and green so Daniel and I had fun testing out the markers on the acrylic sheets and then wiping it off. It worked perfectly! No residue left on the acrylic and no damage to the quilt. Yay! 

It was fun to doodle on different parts of the quilt to see whether stippling, straight quilting or some other design would look good. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the red marker seemed to show up the best, but perhaps that was just with this quilt. And the best thing about this is that if you don't like it the design, simply wipe it off with some paper towel. No seam ripper needed! In my book, anything that helps me avoid having to use the seam ripper is fabulous. This is also a good way to practice the design you are going to do and build up that muscle memory.

Here are some of the results of our test (sorry about the quality of the pictures - the flash reflected off the acrylic sheet too much):

Not convinced that I liked this...

So I tried this...

Hmm, still not convinced. I guess I'll be playing around some more with this one.

And look how it looks when you take it off the quilt. Fun, eh? If you flip it over, it gives you an idea of what the quilting will look like on the back of the quilt. You could use this as a reference tool when you are quilting too. I wouldn't leave the dry erase marker on too long though. I suspect they would leave a mark, if left on for more than a couple of days.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

• Be careful when wiping off close to the edges of the acrylic sheet while it's on the quilt so that marker dust doesn't get on the quilt.
• I also wouldn't use wet erase markers, in case you wipe off with a wet towel and it drips on your quilt.

I'm still having fun playing with this new tool, but it has already become one of my favourites. Will I use it for every quilt? Probably not, but I'll definitely be using for any quilts on which I want to use multiple quilting designs. It's much easier to wipe off a design that isn't working than rip out stitches. Did I mention how much I hate having to use the seam ripper? ;)