Yes, look very closely at the bottom of the photo and you will see it ... that's right, I did an inside trim. If you've been in any of my classes you'll hear me give my reasoning ... the biggest reason I can think of learning how to do free motion quilting ... no more 100's and 1000's of click points so you can do either an inside or outside trim around a piece of applique. And, since I started out with my first longarm machine in 1999, a Gammill Classic Plus and driving the machine myself, I can always drop a freemotion background around applique pieces much more quickly than using the trim feature. So, I have never really had much reason to play with this function in Creative Studio on my Statler Stitcher ... until I got to the finish of Juanita's quilt.
Now, I do have to admit, coming from my background in freemotion and how I was taught longarm quilting, I do prefer to sew off the edges so the tie-offs are hidden and secured under the binding. This means that in most cases I probably would have allowed this edge-to-edge pattern to go ahead and sew off the bottom of the quilt. But in this case, the batting scraps (which Juanita told me to keep) were just the right size for another small project I want to do so I didn't want to have to pick-out the quilting. My only option then is to use the INSIDE TRIM function. You can see the white box at the bottom of the quilt where any quilting that fell in that space was trimmed away. Tie offs occured in the binding area of the quilt all along that line giving a nice neat secure finish to the pattern. I have a batting scrap just the right size for my next project; and I have officially done my first INSIDE TRIM on a customer quilt - my first since I stitched out my test sample certifying me as an instructor for Creative Studio. Yeah!
Juanita's quilt was quilted with 1283 Cherrios Fill. What a great textural edge-to-edge pattern that stitces out so smooth and balanced. I don't know about you but I'm finding more and more how much I loke the look of a textural background edge-to-edge over a pieced quilt. The quilting design enhances the piecing without distracting the eye with a recognizable image ... a heart or a frog or a leaf that might be a part of the quilting design. And usually these textural patterns a a pretty quick stitch-out.
The piecing pattern is MQS 120 Bebe Bears.
Juanita had this yummy rich flannel in her stash - blue florals with a soft mossy green background, the solid powder blue, and a cream small print background. We used Warm Bond for the batting. I like the drape of Warm's 80/20 blend for most of my quilts. I love the crumpled antique look caused by shrinkage when my quilts that have this batting are washed. They come out of the dryer so soft and cozy. For thread, I used Siganture's 100% cotton on the top and in the bobbin ... a soft yellow to give a "cast of sunshine" across the top of the quilt.
... be bold ...
... be brave ...
... make and share the music of your soul ...
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