All you need is texture

I’ve been singing the Beatles hit, All You Need is Texture all morning. 

At least, I’m pretty sure those are the words.

When I replaced the scrappy border in this little quilt…

it gave a place for the eye to rest.  (and it turned out I liked that scrappy border better than I thought I did, I just didn’t realize it until it was gone and replaced.)

Anyway, places for the eye to rest are great places for quilting.

I used two patterns, one is called wood grain and the other is pebbles. Little better view of the wood grain below.

I had already ditch quilted along every other seam in the quilt.  So, it was quilted in squares and triangles and long rectangles.  This gave me something in the middle of that to fill the space and break up the regularity. 

In the center, I quilted lines.  First, see how the lines of the fabric run.

I imitated that striped fabric in the quilting (might have to blow that one up to see it good) at evenly spaced quarter inch intervals.

You can also see one of the triangles that is filled with straight lines above.  That is done in all of the flower print fabric.  When the flash isn’t highlighting the yellow in that fabric, the straight lines help it to recede and become much less important.  That was helpful for a boy quilt.

Add a green binding to pull the green out to the edge, and it’s going to be a great little quilt…if I can get it to the Mom.

Rebecca asked if I was free motion quilting that wood grain or if it was marked.  It is FMQ, free hand.  No marking.  I got the idea from this book, Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Waters.

In it, she gives step by step instructions for how to get started on a pattern.  Follow her steps for the first couple of repeats and then it just gets very natural. 

 

On the first border I put the wood grain in, the knots were very regimented and evenly spaced.  By the second side, they were more natural and randomly spaced (the appearance of random is very, very hard).  I confess to pulling a bit of echo quilting out of the first side and adding some knots to make them look more irregular.  It worked.

Okay, so that’s it for me today.  Everybody have a great Tuesday.  I’m still diligently ditch quilting the blue baby quilt. 

Oh, and here’s a link to the first in a series of really good discussions about stash.  Thanks, Mari!  These articles make good sense.  I don’t have much stash to throw away, but I sure do have a lot that should go to other people that will actually get around to making the quilts I wanted to make when I acquired and kept the fabric in the first place.  So, now, to figure out which organization that is.  I think I’ll check with project Linus.  Most of this was meant to go into Linus quilts, so they would be a good place for it to go…if they have the room to take it.  They don’t always.  Even though we’re not talking about a whole lot. 

Or, maybe we are…

See ya’.  Lane