Thursday 25 October 2012

Effective

Quilting in the ditch may not be exciting, but it certainly is effective. I make no secret of the fact that I avoid it if I can. It's boring to quilt, and little mistakes show. A lot of people assume that because of the quilts I make, I must have a lot of patience. They're SO wrong! I'm all about instant gratification, and taking the easy way where I can. But sometimes I have to knuckle down and do it the 'right' way. And this is one of them.


Having quilted the white background to this quilt (above and below), I knew the dark spikes would need something to balance them. I suspected it would be ditching, but in vain hope I tried something else first. It wasn't right, and I quickly unpicked it - it only took a few minutes. And then I ditched a couple of blocks, just to be sure.


It's pretty obvious that ditching is the way to go. The front block in the photograph below has been ditched; notice the lovely straight points. The one behind has not, and the points are all wavy. The angle of the photo exaggerates the difference - but in person it's quite evident even straight on. So I've done 2 blocks, and have another 23 to go. Tomorrow. Because along with impatience, I'm an expert procrastinator!

2 comments:

Lori S said...

I totally agree that the ditching is so worth it. Hopefully you get into the "zone" and it will go reasonably fast. I really like the design choice for the background fabric too.

Laura said...

I think quilting NY beauty quilts is difficult to do, it's hard to find a good way to quilt them so the designe is emphasized. I have one ready to quilt now, will have to think about ditch stitching the points, it looks great but I agree is BORING.