Where Quilting Shows

Do you want your quilting to show? Well that’s a silly question. Right? We put lots of effort into planning and executing the quilting for our quilts. Of course we want our hard work to show. But, quilting shows more in some places than others.

Where Quilting Shows

I took some photos at the Minnesota Quilt Show recently to show you examples. Special thanks to the talented quilters who entered quilts into the show!

Best

Quilting shows best on white or light-colored solid fabrics.

Do you see how the quilting shows on this lovely quilt, even from a distance? It’s the white fabric that shows it off.

And when you get close you can see the beautiful quilting designs in detail.

And another example of gorgeous quilting on solid cream fabric.

Light-colored solids show quilting pretty well too.

Good

Here’s a gorgeous quilt.

When you take a close look you can see the quilting very well in the white, yellow, and light-pink sections. Not as much in the blue spikes and dark-pink spikes. Hardly at all in the dark green batik and black fabrics.

Here’s an example of some over-the-top quilting.

The quilting really shines in the yellow background. It shows up nicely in the lighter colors, but it doesn’t show at all in the dark spikes.

Not So Good

This stunning quilt uses black background fabric to really set off the gorgeous fabrics in the pieced stars.

The quilting in the background does not show until you are really close. The quilting on the stars shows on some of the fabrics and not others.

Let’s look at this bright happy quilt.

Beth Holland, the quilter, utilized straight line quilting, a great choice since this quilt is all about the piecing and the colors. The fabrics are all solids so the quilting shows even on the medium value fabrics. It doesn’t show on the darker ones, but who cares? The fun is in the colors and the improvisational piecing.

Here is an example of an all-over edge-to-edge quilting design. The gradation of the fabrics from light to dark really shows how the quilting fades away when the fabrics turn to the dark side.

 Tricks to make quilting show more

This quilt has two strikes against it when it comes to the quilting showing: black fabric and print fabric.  But there was a great space between the blocks to feature a fab quilting design. And a nice wide border too!

So this clever quilter used contrasting thread, in this case white, to make the design show up.

She also utilized strong texture so the quilting would really pop. Look closely at the leaf shapes in the border! This is usually achieved by using two batts or a very high loft batting in the quilt. And then quilting some parts closely and others loosely. The loosely quilted areas pop forward while the close quilting compresses the batting and recedes to the back.

Here is another example using contrasting threads and strong texture contrast. The curve of the roses contrasts with the straight line background quilting.

When planning your quilting, make sure you place the special designs where they will show. Use all the tricks to make it happen.

• light solid fabrics
• strong texture contrast
• high loft batting
• contrasting color thread

Quilt Every Day

by Mary Beth Krapil