Ahhhhh! I’m dying a little bit over those Anna Maria Horner Pretty Potent prints. This is a fabric line that I adore, but never ended up making anything myself with. So it was a special treat to get to quilt this and ooh and ahhhh over the fabrics and quilt design.
When I first looked at this quilt, I was literally stumped at what to quilt it with. I knew it was going to be custom quilted, but couldn’t figure out what to do with all the negative space. I loaded it on the frame and it sat for a week. I sketched out ideas in my sketchbook and didn’t really have any great luck with inspiration. Finally I decided on a simple outlined design with some ruler work, embellished with pebbles and other straight lines to fill in the gaps.
This picture has a filter on it to try to high light the thread more. It was quilted with Glide Cloud, so it doesn’t necessarily blend like white thread would have, but it doesn’t starkly stand out from the background, either. If I could change anything about the quilting, I would go back and double batt the quilt or use a loftier batting.
You can see here a little better that each print fabric was outlined twice with a small ruler. Then pebbles were added, along with some straight lines for filler to add more texture.
I really enjoyed the process this quilt took me through, and I hope to continue to better develop my quilting design. Usually, I can load a quilt on the frame and I have at least 2 fairly decent ideas by the next day. This quilt really gave me a run for my money, but all in all, I’m pretty satisfied with the results. I really love the way a quilt looks finished when ruler work and free motion quilting are combined in the same top. Sometimes the simplest design can work and really make the fabrics and quilt pop, and other times, it takes some work and elbow grease to figure out the best fillers and accents.
