Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Globetrotting: Block 1 Washington DC (basting, design choice)

I am so excited to start quilting Pat Sloan's Globetrotting quilt.  I am so excited, in fact, that I decided to quilt a block each month instead of waiting until the end of the project.

The first thing I did was layer my quilt.  I spray-basted the backing, batting/wadding, and top together:


I chose to piece my backing from scraps, but a whole piece of fabric works really, really well.  I chose Quilter's Dream Green batting.  If I had used a lot of light fabrics, I would have chosen a different batting; the green shows through thin or very light fabrics and tints them a light green.

Pin basting, thread basting, and other methods work well, but I chose spray basting for this one.  I have instructions on spray basting a quilt here.

Using Quilter's Preview Paper and a Sharpie marker, I starting doodling design ideas:


Please note that I only drew on the Preview Paper and not the quilt top!  This quilt block is larger than the Preview Paper.  Since the block is symmetrical, I decided to only draw the bottom half of the block and copy it to the top when I quilt it.

I picked a design for the center of the quilt:


Then I picked something to fill the star points:


I filled the V-strips with some ribbon candy:


I chose a double continuous-curve for the light green squares:


I chose some Vs for the dark green outer squares:


I liked the Vs so much that I decided to put them in the orange triangles as well:



I decided not to quilt the inner brown border right now.  I will quilt it after I join the sections at the end of the quilt along.

Once I finished the doodling, I have a quilting plan all drawn out and ready to put on the quilt:


Tune in for the next step:  Picking thread colors.

5 comments:

Kathy said...

Love it and thanks for the great quilting ideas

Kim said...

Well that was easy....the hard part is getting my ideas to look great on the quilt :0).
How many hours of practice should that take?

Happy Sewing

Barb Johnson said...

I started my first Globetrotting block over the weekend. I guess I hadn't looked closely at the layout, because I was shocked at how big it is turning out! I can see why it is feasible to quilt this first block by itself. Now I'm trying to decide how I will handle the quilting for the whole quilt. I'm thinking that I may try the center block by itself, like you did (are?), but I'm no sure about the smaller blocks. I may wait until I have two or three done and quilt them as units, then join them together. Decisions, decisions!

Angie in SoCal said...

Thank you so much, Debbie - this is just what I was looking for - detailed quilting help. I've bookmarked this and followed so I won't miss one of your videos.

Jackie K. said...

I did the globetrotting Washington DC block yesterday on a practice block just to see if I could do it. It came out OK for my first attempt. I've never done the quilt as you go method and am not sure how to go about putting the quilted blocks together. My question is this: When I quilt my blocks, should I be cutting my batting and backing larger than the block so that I have edges all around to work with she assembling? Any help or links to videos will be appreciated. Thanks so much