making a quilting stencil

While I was out cruising the web I stopped by Amanda Jean's blog crazy mom quilts a while back and she was showing a quilt she had complete with a free-hand quilting pattern I thought would look good on my jelly roll/lasagna quilt.  I don't free-hand quilt because, honestly, I don't want to put the practice in to be good at it.  So what to do?

Remember making your own stencils before you could buy Mylar quilting stencils?  Being the antique that I am (Actually I'm still only a collectible because I'm still less than a hundred.) and inheriting a few from my mother, I did just that.  Time to get the old trusty paper and pencil out, again.

My first step was to draw a strip two inches wide (that's the width of my fabric strips).  Find center, and then draw two lines the width you think you want the quilting to be.  The first try I decided I would make the quilting one-inch wide.   Using the cap off my vitamin bottle to make my curved line I drew a sample.  I thought the first try was too wide, so on the next try I cut the width of my curved line down to a half-inch.  I liked it much better.

Next, I opened up a cereal box and drew the pattern on to it, then cutting the design out.  I used my graphite and white quilting pencils to draw the pattern on four of the nine patches of the quilt.  As you can see I drew the curved lines down the centers of the strips both front and back of the selected blocks.

Kind a looks like jigsaw puzzle pieces to me!  I think it helped the over-all look of the quilt having some blocks quilted this way and some with stitch-in-the-ditch.

For the borders I decided a large diamond would be just the ticket for finishing off the quilting.  Also notice, I used white thread for the large blocks and black thread for the border.  Don't be afraid of using different color threads for the quilting it can make a dull quilt come to life.

I think I am going to continue channeling my mother today and stay in my nightgown all day.  Maybe do some baking (cookies and bread) and a pot of soup sounds good, too.

I hope everyone is having a good day!

Judy