You can transform your quilt from a Plain-Jane to an Exciting Quilt with simple design elements in your quilting design. Although books are improving about any of it, often a guide demonstrating a beautiful quilt top design falls short in regards to suggesting quilting designs.

Many of the books have small pictures of the whole finished quilt top, leaving you guessing how it had been quilted. Others have close-up pictures of the Summer doona design for area of the quilt top, but don't show how that part connects with the remaining portion of the top.

Effective quilting designs don't need to be intricate and detailed to be effective. A quilter might choose a pattern that only echoes the pieced or appliqué design, outlines someone design feature, or creates a grid or group of parallel quilting lines.

In deciding just how to quilt your quilt, you must first look at a number of the overall design elements of the quilt top, and ask some basic questions, like: Is there design features I want to emphasize? Exist elements I wish to have recede into the backdrop? Exist large, open areas the place where a quilted design, like a feathered wreath, could be effective? Does the quilt have movement that I would like to enhance (i.e. is there curves and waves vs. straight seams)? Can there be interesting fabric I want to highlight or produce a contrast

Once you've several of those basic questions answered, it's time to check out some specifics.

A quilting design that echoes the essential design of the quilt is probably the easiest to perform, yet choosing which design components of your quilt you echo can, indeed, affect the overall look of your quilt.

For instance, for a straightforward Irish Chain quilt, by quilting parallel lines of quilting through the diagonal lines of squares creates a kind of channel affect, making the guts squares stand out. The square in the guts could be quilting in a completely different way, developing a new design element.

If your quilt is green and white, how about quilting a shamrock in each square? Quilting a center in each square delivers yet a different message. Or, mix them up, a shamrock in most other square, alternating with a heart.

Another approach to enhancing the pieced pattern of the quilt would be to quilt additional shapes of the key design. For example, you are able to turn an eight pointed star in to a 16 pointed star by quilting points in the background between each of the 8 pieced points. By varying how big is the quilted points, you are able to provide the star a lot more dimension and interest.

Quilting designs in large and open areas may be used to repeat curves or angles appearing in other areas on the quilt.

Heading back to the Irish Chain, you could carry the shamrocks or hearts into the border by quilting them in one of the borders.

On a quilt using plaid fabric, you can produce a plaid design with your quilting stitches, even yet in areas where you have placed solid fabric.

While some quilters may advise you differently, you will find really very few rules as it pertains to designing the quilting pattern for your top. However, understanding a couple of things about quilting does help.

Quilting in the ditch anchors and sharpens the seam line therefore the seam looks as straight since it did when the very best was pressed. In the ditch stitches also cause the adjacent pieces to puff up.

Because your quilting stitches cause the fabric to recede, a line of quilting can cause the illusion of a seam where there is none.

Quilting across a seam line distorts that seam line and may soften the contrast between two pieces, thus easing the transition between areas on your top.

Quilting by way of a fabric design will distort the design. If the fabric design element is something you want to keep, consider quilting around it. For example, if your fabric has flowers, then quilting round the not in the flowers can make them puff up in your quilt top. Adding more background quilting - whether it's stippling or quilting a grid - could make the flowers puff up even more.

The good thing / bad news about quilting designs is there are really no rules - only items that happen once you put quilting stitches in your quilt. Therefore, designing your quilting pattern, similar to designing your quilt top, is greatly a dilemma of personal taste and your idea of one's final quilt.

So, take those unfinished quilts out from the closet, and plan a quilting design, knowing that it cannot be wrong! And that however it is quilting, it is better to truly have the quilt being utilized on a sofa or bed or viewed hanging on a wall than it's to possess it hiding in your closet.