I am so lucky to be able to quilt on a beautiful client quilt.  My client and I decided to quilt using designs inspired by those in the fabric.   I combined several medallion designs from Anita Shackelford and from  Nancy Haake.  The fill function in Creative Studios (the software which runs my longarm) made it easy.  Here is my (very rough) design:

I learn something new from every quilt, my lessons today:

• size the medallions to the width of the longarm table in order to minimize stops and starts.
• rotate the design so that the start of the design is behind the ‘trim’ border, enabling the rest of the design to sew continuously.
• break apart designs to minimize stops/starts (it sounds counter-intuitive, but if the longarm quilter is going  to stop and start multiple times at the edge of a trim, then breaking the design apart and only sewing the portion which fits entirely on the sewing area will reduce the total number of stops/starts).

Next time I will try:

• to plan the outlines of the design and layering the circle borders by themselves first, then stitch them (stabilizing the stitching area).  Next digitize the center medallions and stitch them.  There were quite a few areas where I attempted to remove stitches which retraced stitching lines but, these were difficult to remove in standalone mode and tedious to stitch.
• to make sure that I take the time to manage the sewing order better.

I love to try new techniques and I’m so excited to learn something new with every quilt!  What have you learned today?

Have a quilty day!