Graffiti Quilts - Not Planned and Planned

Two Graffiti quilts completed, but made from Shirtings from the twins Dad, Gramps and my shirt stash.  Doesn't everyone have a shirts stash?  The first one, the green one for Louis was inspired by Katy over at KatyQuilts with her Improv Quilt.  I tried the improv, it looks so liberating, so free, so fast an easy.  It brought be to a screeching halt.  When I have a plan, I can look at the plan and go.  I know what I need to do and get it done.  But this no plan stuff, oh boy I just don't know how to do it and do it without halting to a snails crawl.  So I got the green one done, it's a baby quilt not that big and I can just push through it.  I love the colors of this quilt.  I wasn't confident in the graffiti quilting so I chose a thread color to match the backing.    The grid on the shirting material is freehand grids, not measured, organic, ya that's the word I want!! More on the graffiti quilting at the end.  Glide thread, cotton sateen backing, hobbs 80/20 batting.  All make for a pretty nice drape of the quilt.

Unplanned

Unplanned Back

 

The second one I needed a bit more of a plan.  EQ7 to the rescue.  I went with triangles, they look great, modern and a consistent patch, I used the accuquilt triangle die, even easier!  Then I just randomly decided in each row where the blue would end, threw in a couple of blue triangles like they were falling off, and it looks pretty unplanned right?  I think this took me even longer than the unplanned quilt above.  But it's done and I think it was worth the effort.  I just quilted the horizontal lines on this not the vertical, in the shirting material,  I got lazy.  I used a light blue thread on top went with 60wt  bottom line rather than glide, getting a bit more adventurous, but not overly confident, shirting material on the back and hobbs 80/20.  I like this combination a lot better, nice softer drape. More about the graffit quilting next.

Planned

Planned

The quilting, oh my this was way out of my comfort zone.  I had Karlee Porters Graffiti Quilting book, six of my doodles and my ipad with the internet close by.  It's really had to just change up the quilting pattern as you go and do what *feels* right.  Well shoot, feathers feel right all the time but I know I can't do feathers all the time.  I would almost literally do one collection of "things", take a look almost all are in either groupings of three or five, stop, check the book, check my doodles, check the internet and figure out what needed to  be quilted next.  It was definitely a learning experience and really stretched the way I had to look at quilting.  Oh and an added bonus, I actually did some ribbon candy quilitng, I was so happy, it even looked pretty decent a few time. Here's some detailed pics on the quilting.  I definitely recommend giving it a try.  I tried, and now I'm going back to my comfort zone and feather something ridiculously!

There were a couple of questions about dense quilting and softness.  Good questions. First, nothing is ever as soft and cozy as hand quilting, absolutely nothing.  I really want to do a blog post on this with examples, one of these days....There are other things that contribute to the stiffness or softness of the quilt.  I think you need to consider softness with air pockets and with drape.  If you associate softness with air pockets, then no dense quilting will never be as soft as less dense quilting. If you associate drape with softness then there are things that you can do to have a very soft drape.  Use a thin thread, the more dense your quilting the thinner the thread. There is a difference between the 50wt  thread  and the 60 wt thread with dense quilting.   Batting, use cotton batting if you want a soft drape, poly if you want a stiff quilt (which you will want if you plan to hang - one layer of cotton, one of poly and your quilt will lay very flat with dense quilting).  I think backing makes a difference too.  Minky is very pliabe, shirting material and cotton sateen all help keep that drape nice and soft.    I really do want to do a blog post with pictures and attempt to show the drape of different combinations of batting and dense quilting.  No it's not as soft and airy as less dense quilting, but drape, which does not have to be stiff and can be quite pliable very dense quilting.

Don't forget to stop by the linky parties, so much inspiration out there.