Day 180 – Slate Tile

Here’s a huge thank you! to everyone that commented yesterday about the Shadow Self quilt. I’ll post more about the quilt and which border I decided to use in the next part of that quilt story.

But right now I’m needing a few new quilting designs for this quilt. The whole black section is going to be stitched with straight lines and sharp angles to contrast with the smooth, flowing lines on the lighter side.

Josh suggested this design after looking at the irregular tile shapes on our kitchen floor and backsplash:

Yesterday I got the borders on Shadow Self and started the marking process for the first step of quilting.

It’s moving so fast now part of me wants to take a break and let it sit for awhile, and part of me wants to run with it!

I know things will slow down quite a bit with the marking, trapunto, and quilting process. More than 50″ of the surface area of the quilt is going to be filled with trapunto (puffy) motifs to cut down on the huge amount I have to fill with dense fillers.

I’ve always wanted to have a quilt this nicely balanced between trapunto and fillers, but never taken the time during the design process to make it happen. It makes me very eager to see the finished product, or at least hurry on to the quilting process!

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. Don’t let the easy square shapes fool you. This design is not supposed to look perfect, like cross hatch grid.

It’s supposed to look organic and irregular, and that can be very tricky to do when so much of quilting seems to be driven by perfection.

Design Family – Edge to Edge. The tiles are worked in rows from one edge of your quilting space to another. This makes for a design that will work great in the open, uncomplicated areas of your quilt.

Directional Texture – No direction. Even with the irregularity in size and shape, these squares still mostly come together in a grid pattern which always wants to recede and fade into the background.
Suggestions for Use – This is a wonderful design to use for contrasts. Place this in the center of a curving flower for a neat mix of straight lines against more fluid shapes.

Back of Slate Tile
 

Feel free to use this free motion filler designs in your quilts,

and make sure to tell your friends where you learned it. 

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