Wavy Cross-Hatch Quilting Behind Appliqué

Throughout the years that I have been doing applique and have taught applique included applique in this quilt or the other, one of the most common questions from students and from my own self, when I'm finished with the applique portion is how am I going to quilt this? And many years ago, I realized that there are some really good ways to quilt around applique and some ways that are just not very effective. Basically speaking what happens with applique is that we usually have a lot of curves in applique, lots of undulating moving lines and this is filled with curves. It may not be filled with circles which are complete curves but everything is kind of soft and curvy. Even the sides of the leaves and the points of the leaves are all soft and curvy. The reason I bring this to your attention is that when your motifs are soft and curvy then your quilting needs to be more linear. If you're making a piece design that's very linear with lots of angles on it, then you can add something very curvy in the quilting. You want that juxtaposition. The reason we want that juxtaposition is because one shows off the other. If we put a bunch of curvy quilting around curvy designs then they get lost in each other or they can overwhelm each other one of the other. So generally speaking, one of the best things you can do with applique is to put across hatch. Now crosshatch is simply those diagonal lines that are somewhat equally dispersed, moving in one direction and then moving in the opposite diagonal direction. And if you've ever seen applique vintage quilts or at least every other applique vintage quilt that I've ever seen has a crosshatch quilted in it, usually by hand. Well, crosshatches asked for straight lines and I do not want to free motion quilt straight lines. I only want to free motion quilt wavy lines or slightly curvy lines. So these are gonna be slightly curvy lines that I'm gonna be quilting in here. And I'm basically gonna show you how to crosshatch in the background space around applique. Now, that being said, I would normally be using black thread on this black fabric. So whatever color my background is that's the color thread I would be using. But today I'm gonna be using some dark gray because I want you to be able to see it. So keep in mind if you're doing this on your own, you want to match that thread to the background. Now I have a flower on here with three leaves and the flower is offset it's not in the center and the leaves are offset to. This happens to come through the diagonal center. And so I folded it diagonally in half this way and folded it diagonally in half of that way and sort of marked those diagonals. And I'm going to eyeball, meaning I'm not going to measure anything from those diagonals and use to begin sewing. So what I'm gonna do is just quilt a portion of this so that you get a gist of it. And I'm gonna start right here on this diagonal bring my bobbin thread up and knot off. So I'm going to move my quilt back and forth ever so slightly as I stitch and knot off. And then I'm going to stitch a slightly wavy line out here to the edge like so. But then I'm gonna use, follow the edge to do my traveling because that edge is going to be, if this is a border is gonna be gone or taken up in the binding. And when I get to the applique I'm gonna follow the edge of the applique. So I'm gonna move over the width that I want my lines apart which in this case it's gonna be about an inch and I'm going to make another wavy line. I'm going to go ahead and cut this and get this thread out of my way. So my wavy lines are about an inch apart, now I'm going to follow the edge this flower, about an inch a way and do another wavy line. And I'm just gonna keep doing those wavy lines about an inch apart and using the edge of that applique to travel along. Or the side of the block. Now I'm gonna turn this whole block and you can see what I've done so far. So my lines are slightly curved and they are about an inch apart. And now I'm going to be doing this portion and I'm going to try to line my lines up with the lines I already have there but I'm gonna finish this corner first. So I'm gonna come down here Go across. And this time I'm going to go all the way across 'cause I can, there's no applique in my way, move over about an inch and one more and then do my corner. Now I'm gonna come back along here like so. And I want to kind of eyeball, like I said before if I felt like I couldn't, I could pull a ruler up here if I needed to, to kind of get a better idea but basically I'm shooting for that. So I'm just going to stitch across and when I get there kind of hookup it. Now I'm gonna follow along this applique until I get to this portion where that line is, and continue that line and keeping this vain. Now I've got this kind of deep point in there and I have to decide, does this line go all the way down in there? And it probably does, right down in here or so. So I'm going to go down into the ambulation, come around and bring my line across. Now here my leaf is going to get in the way and I'm just going to follow around it as necessary. So I'm gonna go back, see where my line would end and then we go around here. Pick that line back up about right there. And I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna come down in here, short little line, all around that leaf again, and pick up what that line should come over here. So you see that I'm just using the shape of the applique to follow around, to get to where I need to make the rest of that line or to make the next line. I'm gonna do one more and then I'm going to go the opposite direction. So I'm just gonna do this little guy right here it's gonna right about to there. So I would go ahead and finish this, but for time sake I'm gonna go ahead and move in the opposite direction now. So I could stitch down there if I wanted to or I can simply come down here and that's what I'm gonna do. So I'm gonna come down to this corner and I'm gonna stitch from this corner in and do my opposite diagonal line. And stop whenever I get to an applique, go around that applique to get to where I want make my next line or continue that line. So this line looks like it needs to continue to about right here, follow that shape till I get to the one inch mark or about an inch then come back. And there you have it, a wavy crosshatch in the background of our applique. So this is a wonderful way to really show off an applique design. It doesn't have to be perfect, there's no keeping those lines exactly the certain amount apart. And because it's wavy, there's no imperfection in the line. If you're trying to quilt straight lines, every little mistake that you make is going to be highly noticeable. If you're quilting wavy lines everything is supposed to be the way it is. Everything, whatever happens, happens and it all looks fabulous. So next time you're thinking about how to quilt behind applique consider doing this wonderful wavy cross hatch.