Custom Quilting a Christmas Bed Quilt

It can be really rewarding to quilt giant Quiltworx quilts with intricately detailed designs, but I absolutely love quilting cozy bed quilts that I know will be used as quilts. 

Gayle from my guild here in Grand Forks, B.C. pieced this dynamic Christmas-themed quilt and let me quilt it how I saw fit.  She had this cozy flannel backing and told me it would be a bed quilt.  I always ask my quilt clients about what their quilt is to be used for when having our consultation, this can help me determine the density that we want to achieve.  Asking what the use of the quilt is is easier than asking what density they want, lots of people don't really think about the quilting when they are piecing a quilt (myself included 😆), so it's always good to ask. 

Watch and Learn to Quilt a Bed Quilt Video

Here is a sketch of some of my plans for Gayle's quilt.  I didn't use all of the ideas sketched here, I always like to come up with 2 or three main ideas and simplify it from there. 

I used three colours of Glide 40wt thread on this quilt.

I really love a piano key border but I had been quilting quite a few lately and I decided to do this one a little differently and quilt the corners at a 45-degree angle instead of mitering the piano keys which is my normal technique.  I was really pleased with the look of this.

As you can see I also quilted in some holly berries and leaves to add to the festive colour scheme.  I kept the center of the quilt clean by using a very simple curved line design in the larger blocks.  This allows the piecework of the quilt to shine and lets the high-contrast fabric be the star of the show. 

There was only one complicated part of the quilt, which was the pieced border, if you look closely you might notice that the diamonds aren't perfectly centred.  This isn't a huge deal, but it made my design ideas look a little funny, so to distract from this minor issue I decided to not quilt the background here at all.  By doing this I was able to conceal these imperfections in plain sight, by not drawing more attention to them.

If I hadn't pointed this out would you have noticed it?  Thanks for reading and watching the video, make sure to leave a comment on the video it really helps support my work and keep the videos coming free. 

I won't be posting another video until after Christmas, so have a great holiday folks!