Sesen Quilting Plan

After getting the Sesen quilt top pieced, I placed it up on my design wall and sat back and thought about how I wanted to quilt it. The first time I made Sesen, I made it as a commission and I opted for an allover free motion quilted meander motif for several reasons (cost, a link back to the inspiration behind the colorway and design, etc.). I’d like this quilt to have more custom quilting, but I don’t want to spent 7 weeks quilting it like I did Pulsar.

Quilting Plan 1 – Custom Motifs

When in doubt, I take a photograph of a finished quilt top into Procreate and start doodling. Of course, the first thing I did was give each area in the quilt it’s own custom motif that related to its shape.

To keep things simple for myself while I was working in Procreate, I used a single color to represent the quilting lines. In reality, I have color matched 50wt Aurifil thread that I will use that will blend in and be much less bold, especially for the background quilting.

Quilting Plan 2 – Crosshatch

A bit overwhelmed by thinking about how much marking, twisting, turning, and tying off the first plan was going to require, I tried a simple crosshatch to see how I felt about it. I would probably use thread to match the Kona Natural background if I were to go with this option.

Quilting Plan 3 – Diagonal Crosshatch

And to give myself options, I also evaluated what a diagonal crosshatch would look like. Based on these quick sketches, I knew right away that I preferred the horizontal and vertical ‘normal’ crosshatch, so I’m glad I took the time to look at this option as it helped me feel confident I wasn’t overlooking something I might prefer more.

Quilting Plan 4 – Dense Background Quilting and Custom for Piecing

The all over motifs still didn’t seem quite right, so I went back and fully sketched out what the quilting might look like for custom quilting inside the pieced areas. In order to help the pieced areas stand out more, I then doodled in a back and forth meandering line. It’s easy to let the color of the “thread” on the background overwhelm the desired effect; the dense background quilting would have the benefit of helping the background recede and allow the piecing to stand out more.

Quilting Plan 5 – Combining Favorite Elements

And then I think I settled in on a solid quilting plan by combining my favorite elements together. I plan to quilt the pieced areas with a 1″ spacing following the shapes of the curves. Then I will fill in all of the background with a 1″ crosshatch. It took me several days of thinking and trying new ideas, but now I’m excited to see this plan come together!