Modern Quilting for a Half Square Triangle quilt

Ok, I can't wait to show you this one! Once upon a time, my very own Love circle of do. Good Stitches made half square triangle blocks for our monthly collaborative quilt.  Jodie hadn't yet decided how to quilt it and was willing to send it to me for longarm quilting practice.  

I knew I wanted to do something special on this quilt, so I browsed through our designs for a block quilting pattern.  With custom block quilting, a quilting pattern is scaled to fit in each individual quilt block.  Wonderful effects can be created by changing the orientation of these designs or even alternating designs. 

You can imagine my excitement when I found a triangular-shaped block quilting design!  How perfect for tossed half square triangles.  But, rather than placing the design inside of each half square triangle, which would have been way, way, WAY too dense of quilting, I scaled the design to pass over several blocks.  

You can see the effect best from the quilt back.  See how the triangular pyramid design is set in groups of four like an hourglass block?  I love it!  

I selected pink thread for this quilt so that it would blend with the quilt top, but show up on the low volume quilt back.  Most of the quilt paths are an inch apart, though where they meet at the center of the hourglass shape they are closer.  Would you have wanted the quilting denser?  Quilting density is something a quilter has to judge.  Feedback welcome!  Customers can make notes about things like quilting density on our project order form.  

Block quilting is significantly more time consuming than edge to edge quilting, even with our fairly automated longarm quilting machine.  Brandon spent about 4 hours executing this pyramid quilting.  The quilt is just 48" square, so you can imagine how long it would take to quilt a queen quilt this way.  Block quilting is a type of custom quilting that we do plan to offer, but at a higher price point than edge to edge.

I've bound this quilt and will now be shipping it to Wrap Them in Love.  I still can't get over how beautifully straight and parallel all those quilting lines are.  Yum!  Still, I know that's not what will matter to whatever child receives it.  What matters is the love and care put into it.. and the way it will keep him or her warm.  Cheers for all charity quilts!