Calming Down a Quilt

We’ve seen them before.  In a world of quilts where there is balance and beauty there are these:

Busy quilts.

 A quilt can be considered busy if it has many colors or small pieces, or if it uses big, bold fabrics.  Whenever anyone mentions a busy quilt, I automatically think of this quilt: 

The 1718 coverlet.  While yes, it’s technically not  a quilt (it doesn’t have three layers and it’s not quilted), quilt researchers will find it in the quilt category when they research oldest quilts.  In 2014, Susan Briscoe drafted the blocks from the coverlet into a quilt pattern.  This quilt is the oldest dated patchwork in the United Kingdom and it’s entirely English paper pieced.  That fact alone (the English paper piecing) is enough to prevent me from making the quilt (English paper piecing is probably my least favorite quilting technique).  But another contributing factor to the “There’s no way I’m making this quilt” column is how busy the quilt is.  There’s nowhere to rest your eyes for a second before moving onto another part of the quilt.   So much is happening in this quilt, you’re not sure where to look first.  There are swans and square-in-a-square blocks.  There are trefoils and half-square triangles.  Something is happening in every square inch of this quilt and you’re not sure where to look first, and there’s nowhere for your eyes to take a breather before you jump to the next block.

That’s what we’re discussing in today’s blog.  What to do with a busy quilt and how to calm it down a bit. 

For most of us, whether we follow a pattern or make our own design, we tend to throw in some neutral areas to break the quilt up – some sashing, some setting squares, floaters, etc.  Remember this quilt?

This is my Halo Medallion and there is a lot going on in this quilt.  This quilt is comprised of a pieced center medallion surrounded by multiple pieced borders.  In order to give the viewers’ eyes a place to rest and to balance the quilt, there are multiple “floaters” between the borders.   These “floaters” – made of narrow strips of solid color fabrics — give the quilt and your eyes a chance to rest.  Largely either by instinct (if we are designing our own quilt) or if we follow most standard patterns, we have neutral areas which break the quilt up and calm it down.  Personally, I think scrap quilts cause one of the biggest, busy quilt problems. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I love scrap quilts.  They are awesome and I love making them.  However, I do think there are a few things to keep in mind as we throw a lot of different fabrics in all kinds of color and patterns together to make a quilt.

•  As you make your blocks, find a neutral to surround them.  This neutral will give continuity to your quilt and make all the blocks play nicely together.  My favorite color to use for this is white.  To me, surrounding my scrappy blocks with a white fabric immediately brings peace and calm to a quilt.  Everything tends to go together, and nothing sticks out like a sore thumb – even any really ugly fabric you have no idea why you have in your stash.  Your neutral doesn’t have to be white; it really can be any color that plays well with the scrappage. 

This is my Sunny Lane scrap quilt. The pattern is from Nickle Quilts by Pat Speth and Charlene Thode. It’s a great scrappy quilt pattern book. I randomly pulled fabric from my stash for this quilt. I really liked the way the white fabric made all the fabric calm down and play nicely together. this was a super-fun quilt and I would definitely make another one.

•  Try a monochromatic scrap quilt.  Sort through the fabric you intend to pull from and see if you have more of one color than the others and play to this color in your quilt. Between your scraps and the rest of your stash, a one-color quilt tends to calm itself down.  Hint:  If you have a favorite quilt color, you probably have enough of this hue between your stash and scraps to make a monochromatic quilt.  And what’s not to love about a quilt made entirely out of your favorite quilt color?

•  When you find the neutral you plan to use, make the most of it.  Use it in the sashing, floaters, narrow borders, and maybe even the binding itself.  The use of the neutral will make all those busy blocks calm right down and get along together just fine.

•  Try organizing your scraps for the quilt in a different manner.  Normally we sort our scraps by color – it makes our quilting life just a bit easier.  But if you are planning to use your scraps to make a scrappy quilt, try to think out of the scrappy box.  Instead of organizing your scraps by color, try organizing them by print.  For instance, if you tend to favor floral prints, pull all the floral scraps from your scraps and use those in the quilt.  If you favor geometric prints, do the same with those.  The same type of print in a quilt does give it more cohesiveness. 

Just about any of these four ideas can also be used for non-scrappy-but-still-busy quilts.  For instance, let’s say we have a stack of quilt blocks like this:

These are great blocks.  If we put them together in a horizontal quilt setting, the quilt may look something like this:

This is a great quilt!  Nothing wrong with it.  But it does make me a bit edgy because I’m not sure where to look first and the entire top is a bit overwhelming.  But look what happens when we add some neutral to the sashing…

Or make an alternate block with neutrals….

The entire quilt takes on a different persona.  The neutral breathes some space into the quilt.

Now what would the same quilt blocks look like if we pick one color from the block and make an alternate block entirely from that color?

Again, this calms it down and pulls the quilt together beautifully. 

We get the same effect if we pull a print from the block and make an alternate block with this same type of print.

One last thought about calming down a busy quilt before we call it a day.  In my research I heard from several folks who quilt their own quilt either on a domestic machine or a long arm.  They suggested several different quilting motifs which help bring cohesiveness and calmness to a quilt.  The most frequently mentioned motif is straight-line quilting – such as a grid, hanging diamonds, crosshatching, or simply quilting the entire quilt with straight vertical or straight horizontal lines.  “The repetition of the same pattern, instead of a motif that has a lot of curlicues and such, gives the quilt a quietness – or at least I think so,” mentioned a long arm friend of mine.  Other suggested quilting options were meanders and loops – designs which are both easy to do and tend to flow over the top of the quilt without adding to the busyness of it. 

I realize this blog isn’t as long as my usual ones, but I have a few things in the hopper for a series of longer blogs in the near future.  I do hope this column gives you some ideas about what to do with a quilt with bold prints or lots of pieces or lots of colors.  There are lots of options you can use to make everything play well together and not make your eyes bleed.  Find your favorite option and use it or you may find the option used depends on the quilt.  Either way, enjoy the process – because that’s really what quilting is all about.

Until Next Week, From My Studio to Yours,

Love and Stitches,

Sherri and Felix