LAF2019

A coworker has commissioned me to longarm her quilt. She is making it for her father (or her friends father?). The top consists of his old cowboy shirts that she cut up into large squares and put together in a tshirt-quilt-top fashion. The shirts are plaid, and most are very well loved, meaning that some are very thin and frail in places.

I will do an all over design, but she, of course, does not want anything swirly or curvy or anything. however, I am very poor at doing straight lines (especially if any diagonals are required!) and am not sure I want to take the time to do the whole thing in ruler work. Any advice on some simple quilting motifs that may complement the top and that will satisfy her and the recipient?

Keep in mind, the shirts are not completely evenly laid out in the columns, as some were cut in different sizes, so they just ended up wherever and however they landed. Therefore, I cannot depend on the lines of the plaid as a guide to keep things straight. There are also shirt buttons still attached, so the quilting has to be flexible enough to go around those at ease.

I was thinking about doing a basic meander, but with harder corners rather than the flowing curves. Is it hard to consistently keep the points sharp and lines straight without softening them into curves and arcs? Any thoughts or other ideas?

Thank so much!

Gay

There's no reason you can't have sharp corners. Try googling geometric quilting pantos, but here is one with several pages of ideas. If you are quilting on a DSM I imagine it would be rather difficult to keep turning the quilt, but if you can use a quilting or embroidery foot it shouldn't be too hard

Urban Elements quilting

cjsews

Curvy or swirling she is probably thinking girly looking swirls. I would show her a couple options and let her choose something. All straight lines may not be what she is asking for. Just not anything feminine
the second picture in the link may be the type swirling she is not wanting

Iceblossom

Have you done the meander where you have stars in there? That can work very well. Practice drawing a few on paper first, where you draw it without lifting your pencil.

Tartan

Does your machine have channel locks? If so I would just do straight lines across the quilt.

Jingle

Good luck, this is a good reason why I won't quilt for others.

quiltingshorttimer

since you need to gracefully manuver around those snaps, why not do an all over, maybe something like Angela Walters does with squares that you connect to the next one, just moving them where you need due to snaps?

GEMRM

Urban Elements has a free one that sort of looks like an open end (box) wrench. I think you can print a paper pattern to make a pantograph or use the electronic version if you have that capability.

mmunchkins

How about using a cowboy hat for the quilting design?

LAF2019

Thanks for the ideas, everyone! She gave me some sleeves from the shirts to fiddle around with something that looks good on the plaid.