Just caught a good look at your quilt, Renata. Well done! I, too, love the fabric of the lights. What fun. Thanks for sharing!

Substance always trumps form, Charae! As long as you don't call me late for lunch, I'll answer to almost anything!

Working away at the blanket stitch on the border of the Holiday Lights quilt. I'm using Isacord thread in an Apple Green (#5531). It is slightly lighter than the vines, blends really well with the yellows and greens, ]looks great with the reds and with the purplish color it almost looks blue. I really did not want to use multiple thread colors on this border. It also is very compatible with the gold background. It almost adds a luminescence to the whole!

If I had to do it again, I would pillow the lights instead of using Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 throughout the whole light because of the piano key border. Not that the seams show through that much, I guess I'm a bit of a perfectionist... . Just passing it on if this lesson learned is of interest. I actually tested putting in the lights in three different ways but did the test on a solid background so I never even thought about the seems showing through...

Renata!!! So-o-o-o sorry "Rentat " was one of my more creative typos. I really don't think it's the least bit funny to mess up people's names...although I do refuse to disable the feature on my iPhone that sometimes changes the word I have typed--in that case I can't wait to see what I'm going to say. It's always so much more intriguing!

Thanks, Rosemary and Charae!

It's gorgeous, Rentat! Batiks! What a terrific choice!

Definitely what Nancy said. Actually your idea sounds like one of the best. What look you want can influence how you do the quilting, and I am sure that there are times when essing would not be the best choice to enhance a quilt, and this is probably one of them.

Thank you everyone for the very nice comments--this is one quilt I'm loving too (especially how the lights turned out). On the quilting, my original thought was to stitch-in-the ditch around the trees going up the left side of the tree in a column and then coming back down the column on the right side of the tree. Maybe do some swirls in the background to punch up the trees. Then in the border, I was thinking to outline all the lights (SID) and do a simple loopy meandering in the border. I would do this if I were doing it on my domestic machine.

If I did it on the HQ16, I would pick a pretty panto design, kind of swirly to look like wind blowing through the trees.

I totally agree with you, Nancy and Margo, about not stitching in the ditch ESS in this case. It would accentuate the individual squares in the background of the trees, which I don't want to do. I'm still open to ideas, thank you for the ideas I've received both on- and off-line. It is a huge help!!!

Yes! What Nancy said!!

PosyP wrote:
This is actually where I disagree with Cindy Needham. I would SID around the individual trees, but would not ESS. I would leave the block seams unstitched and would instead use a background filler ignoring those seams. To me, stitching these seams makes them more prominent and I would rather have them recede with the color changes adding interest and sparkle. But it all really depends on the look you are after. You can SID and then do a background filler over these. That has the advantage of stabilizing the quilt better for the background stitching, but the disadvantage of accentuating those seams, especially if your background fill isn't tight, and taking more time. Obviously just my opinion, though. This is art, after all, so there are a million "right" answers.

Nancy

Renata it's wonderful! Your light bulbs are so GLOWY.

Renata wrote: ESS

Looks brilliant so far

Wow, Renata, that turned out so beautiful! I love all of your colors!! And your light bulbs turned out great! I don't have a design wall, but I've heard of people using a craft iron to tack the appliques to the quilt long enough to get them to the ironing board without them falling off. Just a little heat should tack them without hurting anything behind the design wall. (Remembering that I haven't tried this myself....)

I would have to look at this for a while to come up with quilting ideas. The obvious thought for custom quilting would be to quilt the trees realistically and then add embellishments to decorate them. And then a favorite background fill in the background to make the trees pop. But that also depends on how you plan to use the quilt. I can't wait to see what you decided to do!!

Nancy

Renata-- your quilt is beautiful. I am still working on the 1.5 in HST for the inner border but you are inspiring me to get at it!