Surprising Design

 A neighbor, Judy, trusted me to quilt a pretty top she'd made. I love the  warm creams and beiges and soft whites she used. The use of similar values is called "low-volume", with no single fabric drawing attention to itself over the others.

I hung her patchwork on the curtain rod we've installed in our quilt room to observe it for a while. Judy didn't direct me to quilt it in a particular manner, so after looking it over, I scribbled some design ideas onto scratch paper.

When I loaded the top onto the machine and began quilting last week, I questioned whether I'd matched the style of quilting to the style of the top. Too contemporary? Too "scribbly"? I kept going, hoping it would  meet Judy's expectations.

Is it just me, or do other longarmers find "magic" happens when you finish a quilt and unpin it from the frame? While the layers are pulled tight, you see it flat, in two dimensions. Suddenly, when the tension is off and the fabric is allowed to relax, the work is so much more beautiful. In three dimensions, it blooms with texture.
It comes alive!

Judy B's half-square triangle quilt

It more than met Judy's expectations! And when we threw it out across her bed, I discovered a secondary design which seems should have been obvious to me before I ever began to quilt. Can you see the 'circles' formed by the arcs around the bubbles?

I will look for opportunity to quilt this design again.