QUESTION : I've noticed that your recent quilts are very heavily machine quilted. How do you decide on a quilting design, and how do you mark it? I'm especially interested in the machine quilted feathered plumes I've seen in several of your recent quilts.

ANSWER: Most of the quilting I have done in the last five years has been free-motion,machine quilting. That is, I lower the feed dogs on my sewing machine, use a darning foot or other free motion foot, and manually move the quilt under the needle. With this kind of quilting, the stitch length is controled by the speed of your needle, and the speed of your hands as you move the quilt. After hundreds of hours of machine quilting, I am comfortable using my machine as a drawing tool. Generally, I try to approach my machine quilting intuitively. I think of it as "doodling with thread". This kind of quilting is as unique to the individual quilter as handwriting or a signature. Since 1983, when I began making whole cloth quilts from my painted fabrics, I have wanted the quilting to be more than just a decorative way to hold the layers of the quilt together. I want it to be an important part of the overall design. In my recent quilts, I have used many different colors of #30 cotton top stitching thread for my quilting, because it shows up clearly against the quilt top. I do very little marking of the quilt top.

Nectar Collector is a good example what I'm talking about. Most of the imagery in this quilt came directly out of my imagination. When I was a child I used to lie in the back yard in the summer and watch the clouds. After a while, I could begin to see animals, or faces, or other pictures in the clouds. The quilted images developed in much the same way. I sat and looked at the painted fabric, until a picture developed in my mind. Then I quilted the picture. Most of the imagery is of various flowers, leaves, and weeds. These images represent my feelings when I experience flowers and weeds, and not any specific botanical species. When the quilting was about three quarters finished, a friend saw the quilt in my studio and said, "you ought to hide a bird in it somewhere." At first I rejected this idea. The next morning, however,the large red-orange weed in the center began to look very much like the sort of plant a hummingbird would like, so I quilted in a hummingbird, collecting nectar from this plant. Thus the title "Nectar Collector." The humming bird needed to to have anatomically correct proportions, so I drew the humming bird with a white pencil and followed the pencil lines. Click here for detail. The rest of the quilt was stitched free-hand.

click for closeup showing stitches

As you mentioned, a number of my recent quilts have included a variation on the traditional "feathered Plume" quilting motif. These plumes tend to become major compositional elements in the overall design. Where they start, where they stop, and what path they follow along the way, is important to the balance of the whole composition. The path of a feathered plume is determined by the path of the center stem, so all I mark is a single pencil line, indicating the center stem. The "feathers" themselves are stitched freehand. As long as the base of each feather ends up along the center line, I know I'm on the right path.

When I do mark, I generally uses either a white charcoal pencil (available in art supply stores like Michael's) or a "verithin" pencil. These were made by Berol until recently when Berol was bought out by Sanford. They now say "Sanford verithin" when you buy them. These pencils will chalk off very easily, so they don't leave pemenant marks on your fabric. Be sure to remove all the pencil before blocking your quilt with a steam iron, as the steam can set the charcoal marks. I find that a clean piece of cloth rubbed over the marks works as well an anything to remove them.