Those pesky shadows!!

A couple of weeks ago I received my judge’s comments from the quilt that I showed at Quiltcon…..

Normally, I am pretty sure of what the judges are going to say and this time it was no different.

I received “exceptional” marks in the Visual impact with comments of “Good depth, great design, and strong piecing”!!

Well, THAT was encouraging!!!

Then they hit the problem area…..

“Shadowing of dark fabrics and threads under light noted and is very distracting”.

OKAY…..I agree!!

If there was one thing that I was frustrated with it was the shadows!!

I talked about them in this post about basting the quilt…..

Preparing to quilt!!

….and even showed what I trimmed out while basting…..

Even though I clipped a bunch of these there were several that I missed…..

I then talked about the thread that was trapped under the top and was driving me crazy!!!…..

Out….Out Damn Thread!!

But even more distressing were the seams where the dark blue fabric could be seen behind the seam allowance…..

A SOLUTION!!!

SO….this past week I was watching YouTube videos in the gym and came across this one from Karen Brown of Just Get It Done Quilts…..

And she has the BEST solution…..

At 6:33 minutes into the video, she suggests that, if you have to press to the light fabric, trim a minuscule slice off the seam allowance before you press…..

Yes, it would add time to the piecing but in some cases, it would be worth it!!!

Karen has lots of other great ideas for working with white fabric so you might check out the entire video!!

So, NOW I KNOW!!! Hopefully I can remember and use this idea going forward…..

AND…..if you are wanting to get started with Ruler Quilting but don’t know where to start, check out this short course…..