Longarm Inspiration

Quite a few people advise learning what you like and don't like in quilting designs by taking pictures at shows whenever you can in addition to the more readily available books and magazines. Not only can you more easily jog your memory as to how a design flowed, but you can analyze why something worked (or not). So when I went to the show last weekend, I wanted to keep that in mind and take some closeups of the actual quilting. All the quilts in this show were labeled as to whether they were hand quilted, machine quilted or longarm quilted, in addition to whatever other category they were in, and that was helpful for my purposes.

This first quilt was called Morgan's Graduation Quilt, and it was pieced and longarm quilted by Adrienne Reynolds. Although I liked the bright colors on black, the bottom third of the quilt, with it's lighter colors and lighter background, seemed like it was just tacked on to make the quilt bigger.

I liked the swirling vines coming from the center of the stars; it made a nice-looking overall texture while still relating to the pieced design.

This one is Amazon Star, pieced by Mary Calderon and longarm quilted by Krista Moser. Although the overall look is lighter and more pastel than I usually like, this is a really effective use of color and value. And all those points!

Many of the rows of same-colored diamonds were quilted in a continuous line-dancing fashion.