Serenade Background Quilting

As I promised, here is my tutorial for the quilting motif I used for the background quilting of this quilt “Serenade” as well as the background quilting for the other wholecloth miniature I call “Silk Refrain” that I made last year.  (You can do a search for the words Serenade and Silk Refrain on my blog to read more posts about the 2 quilts.)Stitching this design is really not too tough, just spirals, but since I didn’t want to try to keep them equal in size and shape I purposely made the spirals in the backgrounds different.  Here is my method and a few hints on how I stitched it out.

Since I am left handed I might start out the spiral in the opposite direction than you right handed people but it makes no difference at all so stitch them the direction you want.  As you can see you stitch a spiral then find your way out of the spiral. You will be going the opposite direction as you stitch out of the spiral so you see it really doesn't make a difference which direction you start.  Stitch as many circles/shapes as you want to fill but remember you will be echoing out on each one so leave enough space between the spiral lines for this.  When you echo out you stitch between the lines until you get to the outside.  Not too hard, right?

After finishing one spiral just start another, trying to make the spiral a different size or shape.  Since I would have had trouble keeping them all identical I choose to make them different sizes and shapes but you can go for a consistent size shape if you want.  Keep them all different also makes it easier to fill in odd shapes of the background.  Just follow my spiral drawing from the start arrow to follow the design as I drew it.  Speaking of drawing….if you practice drawing these spirals over and over it will be easier to stitch them as your brain will have a memory of the design.  Remember the main thing when stitching/drawing the beginning swirls of a spiral is to make the space between the lines double the size you want the finished spacing to be and to leave yourself an escape route so you can exit one spiral and go on to the next.

Again follow the lines of the above spiral to figure out how I moved from one spiral to the next.  You can echo the lines of the previous spiral to move to a new area like in the above drawing.

There really is no wrong way to quilt this background or the size and shape of the spirals it is up to you.  Notice the green spots on the diagram above.  These are ways to change direction or to fill an awkward area.  As much as possible I try to keep my stitching lines rounded and not pointy but a pointy one once in a while just blends in.  If you want to make more pointy lines like the one with the green spot in the upper left just go for it….remember it is no rules so do it your way.  Will backtrack a bit here as I do have one rule I try to follow.  I try to make all the spaces as close to the same size as I can.  This makes the filler look like an overall design and one area doesn’t pop out as different.

I do love quilting this motif but maybe I should have varied the background quilting motifs on these two small quilts and used some other filler on some parts.  I still love the quilts but I never stop wondering “what if” and I think that is what makes every “next project” fun to implement using those new ideas.

Happy Quilting,
Lynn