No, No, No.......please do not leave the spaces empty!! :-). The type of quilting you have already done screams for more quilting to fill in the empty areas. As others have said, stippling or pebble-ing would be good. I would stipple//pebble up to the motifs you have already quilted. I think the straight lines would be lovely but a lot of stopping and starting or backtracking. :-). Anything more intricate might lose the motifs you have already quilted. Which ever background filler you decide on doing, should be smaller than the motifs you have already quilted. Can't wait to see what you do to finish it!! I hope this helps and is not too "motherly" (as in telling you WHAT TO DO) haha

Ellen 1 and I agree. And it is beautiful.

Can you show me what you would do? Download my pic and draw by hand what you mean ... I get the idea, but I am a very visual person LOL If you can, that would be awesome!

Thanks,

Ok I will give it a try, but it will be a while. :-). I hope my head comes out in my hands....hahaha

Marian, I think you will need to echo around your previous quilting to keep the background fills from "running into it". I could not tell if there was enough space to stipple/bubble into the circles etc or not. I did not think so from what I was able to see. I hope this helps give you some ideas. These are examples of stippling, bubbles and straight lines.

Edit: I think one echo would be nice.

One thing to think about if you are doing straight lines, i.e. crosshatching.......I made a piece that I deliberately made the lines not match up. When it was judged the judge said it should have been straight. What can I say....I did not want them straight. One judges perception (her's) of how crosshatching should be done vs another judges perception of being creativite (mine). Haha

So my point here was....if you were to decide to crosshatch between the motifs you already have, take care to get them to line up good. :-)

Marion,

Another great project! Have you seen the circle foot for your machine? They are easy and fun!

This is going to be a very interesting quilt. Looks like it would be fun to quilt.
What did you use for your markings?

Negative space works well and you may not have to use fill unless there is pull from the quilted areas.
Be sure to post this again!

That's really neat. I like the quilting designs you've got marked on it. I think if you did some micro-quilting, either micro-stipple, micro scribble, or micro cross hatch in the blank spaces using a very fine thread like 100 wt silk or 100 wt Invisifil polyester in the same color as the back ground it would flatten the background and make your quilting pop. The ultra fine thread done as micro quilting would disappear into the background fabric and just add some texture. You could leave the background parts blank as well, but they may end up coming forward (puffing up more than your quilted areas) if you use a lofty batting. I think if you quilt your designs first, you will be able to decide whether you want to flatten those background areas once you've had a chance to see how it's looking.

Rob

I agree! If it was me, would probably echo your motifs with 1/4 or 1/2” then fill the rest with pebbles (smaller scale than the motifs) so your big motifs will pop. Looks amazing so far!