Yesterday, I decided to try a couple of different quilting techniques. I have some brown cheater fabric that I think is really fabulous and I hope to use it to make a couple of baby quilts. Before I committed to a particular quilting style, I wanted to practice.
The first attempt at something other than stimpling turned out magnificently (if I do say so myself)! This pebble technique created a LOT of texture even before washing the quilt. I think this happened for two reasons. One is that I didn't baste the quilt (I was in too big a hurry), so the fabric moved more than it should have. Two is this fabric is thinner than most quilting fabric, so it is more suseptable to wrinkling up. I can't wait to finish this little quilt.
My second attempt at something different was straight line quilting (hopefully I will have a picture or two tomorrow). It is just like it sounds. I roughly followed the horizontal lines of the fabric (same cheater fabric) and spaced my quilting lines about 1/4 to 5/8 inches appart. This resulted in a very flat, not at all wrinkled quilt. (At least it is not wrinkling up like the pebbling quilting.) It looks much more structured and in a way cleaner. I am surprised that this technique took much longer to quilt than the pebbling.
When I finished the pebbling, I was really happy with it, though I wasn't sure that it went with the fabric of this quilt. But comparing these two styles of quilting side by side, I think I like the chaotic, textured appearance of the pebbling. What do you think?
