In early February, I finished piecing the Sesen bonus quilt top. I was not sure how I wanted to quilt it, and I had another project I wanted to complete for a friend, so the Sequenced quilt top got set aside for over a month. Over the weekend, I decided it was time to sit down and put some real thought into developing a quilting plan. So I charged up my Apple pencil and started doodling in Procreate on my iPad.
Sequenced Quilt Quilting Plan
One of the very first things I wanted to do was break up the background. My overall goal is to energize and make the negative space of the quilt part of the design conversation. I started by creating echo shapes around some of the piecing elements.
Sequenced Quilt Quilting Plan
Then I went in and added some free motion quilted back and forth lines to help create more definition. By creating more densely quilted areas, the shapes that I want to emphasize will stand out.
Sequenced Quilt Quilting Plan
Not sure what I wanted to do with the rest of the background, I moved on to considering the pieced elements of the design. I thought that these rounded off squares created by connecting the orange pieced curves were a fun.
Sequenced Quilt Quilting Plan
The orange quilting influenced the beginning of my plans for quilting the red piecing: more rounded off squares! I was able to sketch out this much of my quilting plan rather quickly, but then I got a bit stumped. I tried a lot of different things, including more free motion quilting, but it all competed too much with everything I had already started. So I set aside my doodling for the day and decided to look at it again the next day.
Sequenced Quilt Quilting Plan
After a break, I decided to focus first on the red circles. By creating more ghost shapes, I was tying earlier quilted motifs and piecing elements together. But that still left me with the rest of the background and a few remaining red quarter circles to puzzle through.
Sequenced Quilt Quilting Plan
In the end, I think that adding more echo walking foot quilting to the remaining sections kept the remaining quilting from competing with the other elements of the quilting design.
Sequenced Quilt Quilting Plan
I took a quick screenshot of all the proposed quilting lines without the quilt behind it, and it’s fun to see how the quilting reads as its own unique layer and design. I think it it cohesive and will be a nice compliment to the piecing design.
Sequenced Quilt Quilting Plan – Detail
The trick will be to take my time and get as much of this marked out on the quilt top with my Hera marker before I baste the quilt. The Sequenced quilt top is 60″ wide by 80″ long, so I have my work cut out for me in marking and then quilting this, but I’m excited to get started and see how the quilting brings the quilt to life.
That is one terrific quilting plan! It will be gorgeous and really fits the quilt.
Wowza – what a wonderful quilting plan. Good luck with the process of marking the quilt.
Sharing your process is a gift to all of us. Thank you.
This is going to be gorgeous. Do you leave tails and tie off your threads? Or stitch in place to knot and trim? I am always interested to see what people do. Thank you for taking the time to share your process.
WOW!!!! That quilting will be amazing!! I’m tired just thinking of all the time you put into the planning haha!! THis will be incredible!!!
I love seeing the development of your quilting plan and I just love the woven effect where some of the lines overlap. I also love the diamond star shapes you’ve got going too in the orange (or maybe they’re red, hard to tell on the screen) circles. Thank you for showing your process; it’s always fascinating to walk through someone else’s design choices in their mind!
Like the other commenters, I really enjoy reading about your thought process of how you’re going to quilt your Sesen Bonus quilt. It really flows!
oh wow. I love those rounded off squares and your final ‘plan.’ I wish you well with that size of quilt, and look forward to seeing it all come together!
I have been thinking a lot recently about different ways to approach handquilting. Although I could never tackle something like this, your explanations of how you approach coming up with a plan are really helpful to me, so thank you. This is going to be fantastic.
It’s a great quilting plan, but you will have a lot of marking to do. Hopefully you’ve made really good progress on that front this week.