How Do I Quilt Thee

This would be a great name for a quilt! I will use it someday. It would also be a good name for a chapter in a book or a magazine article.

Why is it so hard to decide how to quilt a top? (I am thinking specifically of machine quilting.) Maybe...

1. The quilter might be too worried about ruining a nice quilt top with less than perfect quilting.
2. The quilter might have limited skills.
3. The quilter might lack ideas.
4. The quilter might lack imagination.
5. There are too many options and the quilter doesn't know which to choose.

So...what is a quilter to do to overcome these obstacles?

You might ruin the quilt. Get over it. Do you manage your life based on what might happen? If you go on an airplane, it might crash. If you get married, you might get divorced. If you buy a new car, it might be a lemon. Accept that whatever you do today is the best you can do right now.

You have limited skills. The standard answer to this is "practice quilting every day." That advice never made sense to me. We lead busy lives. If a person has 1.5 hours to indulge in quilt-related activities on a Thursday night and the person is in the midst of piecing blocks for a quilt, it does not make sense to change feet, thread, needles, and tension to practice quilting for 15 minutes. I improve most when I spend concentrated amounts of time quilting. I may not quilt for a month. Then I may spend 2 months quilting a big project. I would also recommend that you take advantage of opportunities to take multiple-day machine quilting classes. Too often the one-day classes only cover the basics, don't allow enough time for students to practice, and don't permit the teacher to give one on one help.

You don't have ideas for quilting the top. You need to develop a quilting repertoire. Collect stencils that you would like to try. Organize them so you know what you have. You may have books with a lot of good idea, but can't take the time to look through all of them every time you are ready to design the quilting. Make copies of pages with great quilting ideas and put them in a folder...near the stencils. You could also put magazine pages and photographs with great ideas in the same place. Photograph or draw architectural details that might translate into quilting designs. Doodle on paper while waiting to speak with the next available representative.

You lack imagination. This means you quilt in the ditch and perhaps meander in the background...every time. You can't think what else to do. Perhaps you are just in a rut. If you can get out of the rut, you may have a wonderful imagination just waiting to be unleashed. In fact, you must have a wonderful imagination if you gather fabrics and make quilt tops. You probably don't make the same quilt over and over. Make yourself try something different when it comes to the quilting.

You have lots of ideas, but don't know which one is right. There isn't just one right way to quilt a top. Refer to Quilting Makes the Quilt by Lee Cleland, an Australian quilter. Lee made 5 identical copies of 12 different quilts. (Yes - a total of 60 quilts) Then she quilted each of the 5 quilts a different way and they all look great. Consider your options, make a decision, and start quilting. Or you can make 5 copies of each of your quilts and do each a different way. It's your choice.