Never thought of using decorative stitches for attaching a binding... Thanks for the ideas.

Ya'll are wonderful quilters!

Thanks for the compliments. Saturn and rings were made by printing a pic of Saturn(found on Internet) on fabric sheets. I used 2 sheets to make it large enough. I then pieced those 2 sheets together in what I think turned out to be a pretty good semblance of Saturn. I had a blast making this quilt!

Shirmoor, I love Drew's World! How did you make the green encircling the upper middle planet?

I recently posted a quilt, Drew's World, on which I had used a star stitch to tie the quilt. The background fabric was a dark sky with white stars all over it. The star stitch looks exactly like the printed stars and I was very happy with it!

Thanks! Those were a lot of fun to do.
CJ

The Wandering Quilter's Life in a Box!

OOooooohhhh.... CJ! I love your runner! I checked your profile .... and your pictures of your chair covers and table runner are beautiful!

Joyce

I use them a LOT for quilting, I really enjoy the way decorative stitches look, and of course it is so easy to do.

Here's a closeup from a table runner I made, using one of the decorative stitches to do some of the quilting.

I like to use them when attaching my binding. I attach binding to the back of the quilt, bring it around to the front and then use decorative stitches to sew it in place. Using a varigated thread adds an interesting touch as well. If your machine can sew your decorative stitch in reverse, try starting at the center and sewing forward to one end, then go back to the center and sew to the other end using reverse. It is an easy way to get your design to end up the same at the corners.

I am a pretty basic simple quilter when it comes to doing the actual quilting - have been a little afraid to step out of the box in that department. But this summer I bought a Viking Sapphire machine and it has some wonderful decorative stitches. My absolute outside favorite is a gentle curving line that I use for echo quilting on many of my wall hangings. I have done echoquilting or shadow quilting on my wall hangings when I wanted to emphasize a certain shape or motive in the quilt. Following Ricky's Star ( in my profile) was the first one I did in this manner and to my mind still the most successful. But I was always disappointed with my lines if they weren't exactly parallel or evenly spaced. With the gentle curving stitch that I use now the spacing of the lines and the minor variations are not noticeable because the quillting does not line up like soldiers in a row. With this stitch I can be a little more free and I think my results are better.

However on the other end of experimentation I did a wall hanging for a charity event and it was strips of fabric with alternating bands of design fabric and plain fabric Instead of stitch in the ditch I used different decortative stitches in every row and the result was very interesting . I will let you know how it does in the charity raffle. Hope this is helpful but in any case if you find your self wondering if you should do something new or "what if" I did this, JUST REMEMBER RICKY'S MOTTO TRY IT THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN IS YOU WILL SAY --- Well I won't try that again.

Thanks again to TQS for all you do to help us on our creative journey, Ann in a little cooler Alamo, TX

kfstitcher wrote:
That touch of blue was what made me buy the border fabric. I had to tea-dye my blue fabric so it would match the border fabric. I really am happy with the way it turned out, thank you, ritzy

I've seen some great quilting done with decorative stitches, but since you asked about other ways to quilt, I'm going to throw in the idea of quilting from the back. It is a great way to get an all-over pattern, and the finished product usually looks a lot more complicated than the proess really is! Besides tracking the motiff or slected parts of the motiff of the backing fabric, you can even get outlandish. I once used fusible web to applique giant flowers to the back of a quilt in specific places, so that when I quilted them from the back, the special picture popped up nicely on the front. Imagine if I had done it with Razzle Dazzle in my bobbin! It would have been a real eye-catcher.

I play with all the stitches that my machine (Husqvarna Interlude) has to offer.

Lorchen

Ritzy, Your fall convergence is so pretty! I love the sparks of blue with all the beautiful fall colors. You must be pretty happy with it. Karen