Study in Stippling

26 x 28″

When I saw the tiny 1″ square pattern advertisement in a quilting magazine, I just had to have the pattern for this wallhanging. When it arrived, I was not disappointed.

I’d like to share the name, but the pattern seems to have disappeared from the “quilt patterns” box. Maybe some day it will turn up in my “purses and accessories” or “home dec” box, but for now, it is MIA.

The only modification I made to the pattern was the floral border. This was to be made of 3 pieces of fabric, a stripe, then floral and then another stripe. Instead, I used fabric that included all three, making construction quicker and easier.  I had only to mitre the strip into a rectangle.

I loved the quilting pattern in the center. For reasons I cannot recall, I used two different fabrics for the center and the outer neutral border. Perhaps I ran short and substituted, though with my penchant for overstocking and stashing, that seems unlikely. At any rate, the ivory polished cotton center piece has changed to a deeper ivory, much to my dismay.

Still, the machine quilting is the feature that I most enjoy and that remains intact. Machine quilting is one of my many passions, along with English smocking, heirloom sewing and machine embroidery, so I have a wide variety of threads at my disposal. In many of my earlier posts, I have mentioned Madeira Cotona 80 wt. thread, a very fine 2-ply cotton thread used commonly in heirloom sewing.

After using this almost gossamer thread as well as the fine 60/2 Mettler cotton thread for most construction, I found machine quilting very bulky in comparison. So I chose to quilt the entire piece in the Madeira.

I’ve always enjoyed free-motion work and was grateful for that experience when I stippled areas between the roses in the center. With the very fine 80/2 thread and a #60 needle, I could do fine stippling which would have been impossible with heavier thread and a larger needle.

If this had been a real bed quilt, quilting with the fine thread would have made for a very fragile quilt. But it would be appropriate for stippling, which is so stitch intensive.

I am very fickle when it comes to sewing. When I quilt, I think from this is so much fun that from now on, I will only quilt.   I think the same thing about smocking, heirloom or machine embroidery. It is only the demand for one genre over another that makes me change gears.

Do you have more than one favorite kind of sewing?