I’ve been trying to decide how to quilt my Spring Wreath quilt, Andrea (the designer) hand quilted hers with simple diagonal lines but recently she has densely machine quilted other quilts. I didn’t want to hand quilt it and as it’s machine embroidered it did seem to fit the bill to machine quilt it, but how…

I found a pretty quilting design on pinterest which had twining flowers and leaves, I thought that would fit very well. I decided to have a practise to get the feel of the movement. I had a cushion top panel which I had sandwiched to test out the machines where I was holding a workshop, I’d only stitched a simple square box. It was perfect to practise on.

I used a variegated blue thread on top and a plain blue underneath, I prefer to use similar colours where possible so there’s no risk of a little dot of the underneath thread showing on top.The downside is it does show all your flaws!

It’s not pretty!! I started in the centre with the flowers and leaves, not good, so I tried round the border with just leaves, still not good. OK there is an element of it looking worse with the contrasting thread, as on the front it doesn’t look too bad – mainly because you can’t see it! I was certainly not happy to use this pattern on my quilt.

I decided to make it into a cushion whilst I thought about it. I found some co-ordinating furnishing fabric left over from our dining room curtains, so I made it into a simple square cushion.

I was on a bit of a roll then,I decided to make a kanthe stitch hare I embroidered sometime last year into a cushion as well. It wasn’t an easy colour to match. I found a length from my Splendid Sampler stash that went OK with it. I also remembered a really pretty trim I’d picked up in Hobbycraft on impulse a couple of months back. It worked perfectly, picking out both the blue and the beige of the embroidery, together with some brown ric-rac.

I felt it still needed a border. I eventually chose some blue quilting fabric which does go, I’m just not sure it’s not too dominating. I then tried to find some backing and eventually chose a bit of a random woven fabric I actually made a coat out of last year. It may seem an odd choice, but it actually has every colour of the front in it, blue, grey, beige, brown, teal…no I’m still not sure even though I’ve made it up! I’ll live with it for a month and then maybe change it to a calm and peaceful colour scheme!

Anyway, back to the Spring Wreath quilt. I have a plan! It’s sandwiched, ready to start as soon as my variegated cream threads arrives, hopefully tomorrow. I looked at a quilt a made a couple of years ago called Andersons Farm, I quilted that pretty densley and specific to the design, I can do this! I’m planning to shadow stitch round the stars, filling in their centre squares with a meander. All the little pops of colour I’m going to stitch in the ditch around the square and then do a sort of leaf shape in each corner. I’ll then quilt the rest with my usual pattern which can be made more leaf like. Fingers crossed!