One style of quilting that particularly intrigues me is McTavishing. It’s named after Karen McTavish (her friends named her style of quilting after her). If you’ve never read her book on how she got started in quilting, I definitely suggest it – she has a unique path that doesn’t match anyone I’ve heard of.
There are several variations on how to quilt it, but the basic premise is divide and conquer. And the second premise is there are no hard and fast rules, although she does describe the method that she goes through for the quilting style.
I tend to have a lot of conference calls for work and today was no exception. Most of the time when I’m on a call, I need to pay 100% attention for the entire call so there isn’t a lot of goofing around. But every once in a while I get pulled into a call where I’m there “just in case”, given my position and experience. Today had one of those so I pulled out a couple of sheets of copy paper and decided to practice on paper.
The first one I set up as a 6″ square which was a complete unit in and of itself. That one didn’t take long. Then I thought it would be fun to practice this for a future border on a quilt – maybe the Splendid Sampler – who knows!
The pattern doesn’t have to include swirls but I like swirls and honestly, I’m probably not exaggerating if I say every quilt that I’ve quilted has had swirls in it somewhere or other.
In this second sheet, the picture actually is sideways and I didn’t bother to fix it before uploading it but the 45 degree line drawn in here represents a mitered corner. In other words, it could be a sewn mitered corner around a border…or I could create a fake one simply by stitching along that line a few times and mock one up. At any rate, the layout was similar. So far I’ve found for me at least that if I can draw it, it’s a pretty easy transition for me to quilt it. By then, my conference call was done so it was back to the rest of the workday!
Never saw her style before, thanks.
I like it because it’s a very forgiving pattern.
This reminds me of Zentangle art. I
I hadn’t thought of it, but you’re right! The funny thing is I always think Zentangle art is way outside of my abilities…but this seems doable to me. I need to change my thought pattern!
Way to go!!!! I love it and expect to see it stitched out on one of your piecings real soon!!!! I have a few of her books and find her freeform style quite relaxing. She says that it started when she had the thought of stitching “naturally curly hair waves & swirls”. I love it that there is a no rules kind of an approach!!!!
I love her hair by the way. I haven’t stitched any of the borders yet but I’m still contemplating using it there. It turns out it’s a big challenge to use it on 6″ blocks with a lot of detail in them.
Nice doodles! Those would be spectacular as quilting!
I don’t think I’ll share it with the work team though – they may question if I’m paying attention – haha!
The doodling looks like fun! Am I right that this is used for machine quilting? I guess one could hand quilt in this style but I don’t know if any of us have that much time in our lives!
She says in her book that it could be used in any format but I’m with you – no way would I ever hand stitch that!
I’ve seen pictures of this type of quilting but didn’t know what it was called. The only quilting I’ve done is by hand and I promise you I wouldn’t do it like this. Does it make the quilt heavy and stiff? Looking at it makes me think it would end up heavy and stiff not puffy and soft. But it is beautiful quilting. Would this much quilting take away from the main body of work? I’m wondering, I guess, if you quilted your splendid sampler with this sort of quilting would people just see the quilting and not really see the work in the quilt itself? I’m thinking if I did this sort of quilting I would save it for quilts with large pieces, or whole cloth quilts or something. I don’t know but I’ll be interested in how you use it.
Those are some really good questions and I’ll say that I actually held off quilting it into the border while I reconsider if it would end up making the edges of the quilt stiff. Someone else suggested that if I have more space in the quilting without as much detail I could get the same effect and avoid some of the pitfalls you mentioned here. Thanks for the constructive feedback – you are a gem!
Interesting and I love the name! Thank you for stopping by my blog, it’s always lovely to have a visitor.
Thank you!
Gorgeous designs, they’ll look super when stitched too. 😊
Thank you!
Beautiful design. That would be fun to quilt.
I did a couple of samples of it and it was a lot of fun – there’s a lot of freedom in this.
Great job! I love her style.
Thank you! She seems to have such a carefree spirit and it shows in yer style. Great reminder to just loosen up!