Friday 7 September 2012

The Design.....Challenges








I always knew vaguely what I wanted to do with the quilting, use symbols from old maps along the lines of "Here be Dragons".

So in the negative space I know I want to add these images:

  • Sea serpents
  • Wind blowing
  • Mermaid/Sirens
  • Sun with a face on it
  • Sea Horse
  • Old sailing ships
  • Maybe starfish and clam shells
But what to do with the compasses?

Anyway as a starting point I'm going to fix the compasses by quilting a line around the edges.

Quilting Areas
Traditional wisdom states I should start with the centre Compass and quilt out from there, but this is such as huge quilt, I know that this in itself will be a huge task and I need to work up from there.   So I'm going to at it as follows:
  1. Put a quilting line around the edge of each compass to stabilise the quilt a bit
  2. Quilt each of the smaller compasses using filler designs from The Free Motion Quilting Project 365 days - I'm not going to over think this bit otherwise I'll never start, just pick a nice pattern for each area of the compass and start.
  3. Having limbered up the fingers, I'll then start on the centre large Compass and hopefully by then will have understood what helps to emphasis the points and circles and what doesn't.   Will try to plan this bit only when I get to it
  4. Get my map images as listed above and start quilting those.   I promised that I would let them sit randomly but I don't think I will be able to due to Step 5.
  5. Use a number of Leah's sea inspired patterns as filler between the images, as there are about 6 I want to use, I will have to plan this bit but as Scarlett O'Hara would say kinda "I'll worry about that tomorrow"
What I do know is that if I sit on the designing anymore, it will be another year before I take the quilt out again and probably sit and put it all off all over again.   So I'm just going to start and start now!

OK might get a cup of coffee first and do some spring cleaning.

Help!











No comments:

Post a Comment