Quilting To Rest Your Eyes

Earlier this week my friend Lynn came to visit; she knitted on her thrummed mittens while I quilted. As we worked, we chatted about our approach to choosing what to quilt on a top. As stated in previous posts, I always think of the advice given by an experienced stitcher many years' back: "quilt what you what them to see." With that in mind, I have been stitching gentle, curly swirls on the main blocks of my quilt. What I want seen are delicate, lacy, filigree wings...even though the block itself has no resemblance to wings. As this is a bed-sized quilt, I am conscious of adding too much quilting; in my mind, there needs to be room left for a little "poufiness". For sleeping, one wants the blanket to have a soft hand, rather than a stiff feel. While I yammered away about "pouf", Lynn shared a different perspective on the quilting issue... but one which produces the same end result. She terms those open pouf spaces, "a place to rest one's eyes" and suggests that over-quilting a piece can be tiring for the viewer. I hadn't considered it in quite those terms before and I found that interesting.
Lynn was working a picot edge on the cuff of her mittens and I decided that would be a nice frilly addition to my wings.

To make the template to keep my scallops fairly even and regular, I traced the edge of the block on cardstock. A roll of tape worked like a charm to mark the semi-circles as it has the centre point identified on the clear dispenser. I just plopped the roll over my line and traced inside the small circle. Then I cut the cardstock with scissors.
A purple, air soluble marker was used to trace the scallops on the fabric.

Similarly, a cardstock template was made to mark the scrolls on a curvy line up the centre of the plain border.

The picots were repeated along the outer pieced border of the quilt, but other than that the wool batting was given space to plump and pouf and look invitingly soft. Hopefully, the amount of quilting on this piece has reached the perfect balance to rest one's body as well as one's eyes.

Now complete with binding and hanging sleeve, the quilt will wing it's way (pun intended) to Quilter's Connection for the spring issue. Once the editor gives the go ahead, pictures of the full quilt will be posted here.