GWTW - still working on it

I've had an off-and-on relationship with the quilting of Gone with the Wind.  After waiting for a while for my niece to decide what design she wanted (from those I suggested) in the outer border, I lost my mojo for a while.  The poor quilt languished on Lizzie.

 Then a returning client got in contact with me to schedule a quilt with me.  Whoops .. that meant that GWTW had to get done like Right Now.  So, the feathers were promptly quilted in the outer border.  Ya know, it wasn't that difficult.  Why did I wait?  :-)

But then came the *really* difficult part.  The center pieced area of the quilt was made up of some very strange angles.  If I hadn't made the top myself, I would swear that I'd never quilt anything pieced by "that person" again! 

The light colored squares would get continuous curves.  I like the look; they are easy to quilt.

But see all those the coral colored areas?  Oh My Gosh.  Those have been a continuing nightmare for me.  I have been completely stymied for a design that looks nice, is (relatively) easy to quilt and goes with the rest of the quilting.  I didn't want something that looked like "oh, she just stuck something in there".

And then the thread color!   If I used the same color thread in the continuous curves as the coral areas, it would blend in the squares but be contrasting in the coral areas ... I really didn't want that look.  If I used a color to compliment the coral, it would stand out against the light colored squares.  Ugh.

That meant that I would necessarily need to change colors between the small squares with the continuous curves and a different thread color for the coral areas.  Ugh .. I try to minimize the stops and starts because not only is it time-consuming but I tie and bury all the tails.  Ugh.
 

One idea was for a three-pronged spikey thing.   I actually did stitch out one coral area with this design and instantly disliked it.  It didn't go with *anything* else on the quilt. 

I spent some quality time with Jack the Ripper and removed it.

Next idea was a 3-lobed fan and a four petaled loopy thing.  I could do continuous stitching for this design but I wasn't enamored with it.

This design: discarded

Another plan was to do feathers in the coral areas.  This would tie into the feathers in the outer border.  So I put a vinyl overlay on the top and drew in some feathers with a dry erase marker.  (The blue line you see is painter's tape that marks the edge of the vinyl).

You can see that I drew several different styles of feathers.  The ones to the right are stylized feathers.

and the ones to the left are more traditional feathers.

I didn't choose any of the feathers; I think I actually forgot I had done them.  whoops.  :-(







What I ended up stitching was a loose loopy thing, sort of an expanded figure-8.  Below is a picture of the actual stitching on the left and the same area with the stitching drawn in on the right.   I deliberately chose a thread color that matched the coral fabric.  You can't really see the quilting.  I wanted that effect (or lack of it).  There is so much going on in this quilt that I didn't want a quilting design in this area to be competing for attention.  I just wanted a background fill sort of design.  This quilting design flattens the area, which is also what I wanted; it will allow the other areas to puff up a bit.

 See that triangular area?  That's another problem area.  I think I'm going to do a continuous curve in it also.  The radiating lines I have in the other triangular areas would look exceeding odd is this isolated piece.

So, at this point, I believe I have all the areas to be quilted identified with what I'm going to put in them.  It's been a *real* bear.   Gosh, I never want to see this layout again!