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Peacock Tail E2E Stitched in 40 wt Glide Thread, Color Warm Grey 4 |
"I love that design, but will it look too busy on my quilt?" That's a question I often hear from my longarm quilting clients, especially when we're considering a newer design and I don't yet have photos of what it looks like stitched out. Just looking at line drawings of quilting designs, they ALL look really busy because of the high contrast of the solid black stitching line against a white background. However, in real life it's almost always the relationship between the fabrics in your quilt top and the thread color we choose that will determine how subtle or dramatic the quilting appears on your finished quilt. This beautiful batik quilt (It's The Road Home BOM from Wilmington Prints) that I finished recently for my client Mildred, pictured above, is a really good example of this.
Peacock Tail E2E for Subtle Texture
On Mildred's Road Home, I've quilted out Peacock Tail E2E, one of those designs that looks like it might be "too much going on" when you look at the line drawing:
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Line Drawing for Peacock Tail E2E Quilting Design by Nancy Haacke |
A couple things to note about this design. First, it's a very large scale design, and the image above is showing six repeats nested together. You're not looking at the design anywhere near the size I'd actually stitch it out, either -- the purpose of this drawing is to give an overall view of how the design will repeat and "flow" across the surface of the quilt. I love the sense of movement this design creates and I love how the rows nest together so well -- you don't look at the finished quilt and see "rows" of quilting at all.