There aren’t many weekends that I can spend all or part of both days in my sewing room, but this was one of them. The entire day Saturday and some of the day Sunday were spent working on various items. With some bonus time on Friday evening, I was able to layer the Horseshoe Canyon quilt with backing, batting, and top. That is ready to be quilted, and I’ve got a good idea how I’m going to quilt it – I just need to gather up the courage to attempt it with my domestic machine. I don’t normally quilt projects this size on my own, honestly. But in this case, the quilting will be stitch-in-the-ditch, and it involves either straight or almost straight lines, so I think I can handle it.
The question of quilting for these projects is an interesting one, and it goes back to the thoughts I had about quilting the Crater Lake image. Quilting is a necessity for these projects – after all, it’s not a quilt unless it has those three layers sewn together! In a traditionally pieced project, the quilting is an opportunity to enhance the piecing. Let’s take another project I’ve got started (but have clearly shunted aside for the moment) as an example: Getting to Know Hue. I’ve been in love with this project since I first saw it hanging in the quilt shop where I got all of the block-of-the-month patterns and fabrics, but it’s a very different type of project. I am actually planning to leave out the applique in the corners of the center block with the star. I’m not sure what I’m going to put in there in its place, but one of the options is to work with the long arm quilter (because let’s be honest – I will not quilt this on my domestic machine!) to do something design-wise with the quilting rather than trying to piece something together. In this type of project, the quilting has a chance to enhance the piecing – to bring out the colors and enliven the background. To quilt this project with a stitch-in-the-ditch method would be a TRAVESTY. Could it be done? Sure. But why would you do it that way?!
These picture quilts, though, are very different. There’s no background fabric in the same way that there is in the Getting to Know Hue quilt. Everything is part of the image at a higher level than the “main fabrics” of a traditionally pieced quilt. To quilt these images any way other than stitch-in-the-ditch takes away from the image, unless the stitching is meant to be part of the image in some way. (Like quilting around bits of the tree in the Crater Lake quilt. Doing that enhanced an element of the image.) But to recreate an image, even in the abstract, such as I did with the Horseshoe Canyon quilt using fabrics to mimic elements of the image renders intricate quilting unnecessary. All of the image elements are there already – in the fabric. Why try to distract from that with quilting?
The question is: does the quilting enhance the quilt, or does it distract from the quilt? Intricate quilting on a traditionally pieced quilt enhances it, if it’s done right. Intricate quilting on these picture quilts that I’m working on, in my humble opinion, would detract from them – at least for the ones I’ve done so far.
And so the Horseshoe Canyon quilt sits until I can gather up the courage to shove it into my domestic machine to do some plain ol’ stitch-in-the-ditch.