It’s been a little while since I worked on my landscape quilt, but the first thing I did after getting home from my trip was dig out my threads! I needed to find that perfect variegated blue to quilt the sky.
You may remember from my previous post a few weeks back, that I had planned to do some quilting while away visiting my daughter but had managed to leave that particular blue thread behind. So, needless to say, grabbing it from my thread box was right at the top of my list when I got home!
Blue variegated thread for stitching the background sky area
Why Start With the Sky? You might be wondering why I didn’t simply start quilting somewhere else on the landscape. The reason is that it’s always best practice to quilt the background areas of a landscape first.
It’s much the same principle as adding applique pieces. When you’re building an applique design, you generally add the background pieces first and then work your way forward, adding the pieces that sit on top. The same idea applies to quilting.
By quilting the background first, if your stitching wanders a little or isn’t exactly where you intended it to be, it’s much easier to cover it when you stitch the foreground elements later.... And, of course, with free-motion quilting, things don't always go exactly to plan - that’s perfectly ok!
So, with my blue variegated thread, I was ready to get started.
Here’s where I began, working my way across the sky area with free-motion stitching in a horizontal direction.
Beginning free-motion stitching in the sky area
As I stitch, I’m aiming to follow along any raw edges where I can. I’m also varying the width between each line of stitching rather than making them all evenly spaced.... and I’m keeping the lines wavy.
I don’t want the quilting to look too regular or mechanical. The gentle horizontal curves help give the sky a more natural, organic feel and also create a sense of movement.
Quilting the sky using free motion
Another useful trick is to stitch along an edge when you need to move from one line of stitching to the next. (You can see me doing this in the photos below.) Since the applique edges of the trees and trunks still need stitching, we can use them to hide the connecting stitches. This is a great way to move around the design without having to stop, cut your thread, and start again.
Note: Just keep in mind that you don’t want to build up too much stitching in one small area, as it can become difficult to stitch through all those layers.
When I reach one of the tree trunks, I stitch up to it, but not over the trunk.
Then I stitch down along the edge of the trunk for a short distance before moving away to begin my next line of quilting.
Quilting along the edges of the trunks to get to the next starting point
This is one of those little techniques that makes landscape quilting much easier. Rather than stopping every time I reach an applique piece, I can use the edges that still need stitching as my pathway to the next section.
When I start stitching the other side of the trunk, I try to match my stitching line for line, but (and this is important) it doesn't have to be 100% accurate!
I’m really just trying to keep an imaginary line continuing behind the trunk. Once the quilting is finished, your eye reads the lines as continuing through the design, even though they disappear behind the tree.
Landscape quilting matching line to line behind a foreground object
You maybe thinking, why not do the quilting before adding the applique? Some quilters do this but I find often those quilting lines show through the applique. To avoid this, I would need to back all the applique pieces before attaching them and for this reason, I find quilting after the applique is added the better option.
Halfway There! By the end of this sewing session, I had a little over half of the sky quilted.
Sky quilting is half completed - closeup
Sky quilting is half completed
I’m really enjoying watching the sky start to take shape. The variegated blue thread is doing exactly what I hoped it would, adding subtle changes in color without making the quilting too obvious.
Of course, there is still quite a bit of stitching to go!
I can’t sit at the sewing machine for too long because my eyes get tired, so I’m going to take my own advice and do a little each day this week rather than trying to finish the whole sky in one marathon quilting session. Hopefully, by the next update I’ll have the sky completely quilted and can show you how it’s looking.
And now I’m curious.... are you up to quilting anything at the moment? Maybe a quilt that has been sitting waiting for its turn at the machine? I’d love to know what you’re working on! Leave me a note in the comments below.
