Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Cardinal Sin of Quilting?

I have quilted The Color Purple quilt, but I'm afraid I'm not done. I know that the cardinal rule of quilting is that the quilting needs to be evenly distributed over the quilt and this isn't. I quilted in the ditch around each 6" square. Then I quilted diagonally through the beads/pearls/almonds, making side to side squiggles in the beads/pearls/almonds - similar to what I did on the citrus zipper quilt. (My machine quilting skills are very basic - if something works, I want to do it again.) This isn't so different from my pink and brown pinwheel/snowball quilt (in the ditch/diagonal with detail), except those blocks were smaller and the swirl was wider, so the quilting was more evenly distributed.



Any suggestions? Is it ok the way it is? The distance between the almond edge and where the four blocks meet (with intersecting in-the-ditch-lines) is about 3". According to Warm & Natural, you can quilt 10" apart, but I don't imagine that would stand up very well in a baby quilt! I'm not afraid of the quilt police, but I do want my quilt to wear well!

4 comments:

Helen in the UK said...

I think this will be absolutely fine. I think the rule of thumb is generally no gap bigger than a fist. When 'they' say the quilting should be evenly distributed it means don't leave any one area (centre, border, etc) with minimal quilting and heavily quilt another area or it will distort the shape. This quilt looks wonderful :)

Leah Spencer said...

I think it's great! The swirl is a great "personalize" touch from all the other straight line quilts out there. It looks like there's no more than 3 inches of a gap anywhere, so you should be safe, even with plenty of washings. :)

Lois R. said...

Hi! You've been visiting me, so I thought I'd pop over to see what you're up to.

I love the quilt -- really pretty fabrics.

My personal preference would be to do more, but who cares what the quilt police or I say -- are YOU happy with the amount of quilting? If you want more, why not try shells (three leaves with their ends touching) in the corners opposite the beads? That will give you more quilting and, based on what you said you did on the coasters in your last post, you can handle it!

Cynthia said...

i'm no expert when it comes to quilting but from the photo it look okay to me. As Helen said, no gap wider than your fist. That's what i do.