How to Embrace & Disguise the Imperfections in a Quilt with BIG Bold stitches

Womp Womp Womp… Please tell me I am not the only one who has done this before.

Recently I finished a quilt top and was SO thrilled with how it looked and then when I brought it outside into natural lighting for photos, I noticed that some of the white background pieces got mixed up and I somehow used the WRONG SHADE OF WHITE.

In this post, I want to teach you what I did to try to embrace the imperfections instead of ripping out the seams!

When I realized the error I had made, I just about cried because the seams were all already sewn in and I hate ripping out seams. I literally debated fixing it for about a week until my quilty friend Eliane (@patchworkandpoodles) suggested to me an ingenious way to distract from the color discrepancy: BOLD HAND QUILTING.

If you know me, you know that bold hand quilting & I already have a pretty solid relationship, so obviously this was a no-brainer for me! I quickly picked myself up, selected the perfect backing, basted my quilt, and started playing around with hand quilting ideas to make the background colors not matter so much!

Flight Plan Quilt Pattern

A little backstory on this quilt: I tested the Flight Plan quilt pattern for Shannon Fraser Designs. This is the baby size and I loved how it is fat quarter friendly! The fun, scrappy look of this pattern means you get to use a BUNCH of your favorite fabrics all in one project! For this quilt I used the amazing Salt Wind fabric collection by Emily Taylor for FIGO fabrics. If you love these colors, you can find it for sale HERE. I really can’t say no to a quilt that I can use a whole fat quarter bundle on, so I can really see all the coordinating fabrics all together!

For background fabric, I used (mostly) solid White by PBS Fabrics. Honestly, I still have no clue what the few rogue offwhite pieces are! The backing is a print by Ampersand Studios for PBS Fabrics and I actually really love how it works! I decided to use my go-to batting for hand quilting: Quilter’s Dream Orient! It’s incredibly luscious, soft, and you can quilt up to 8″ apart, so it provides a lot of flexibility in case you decide you get tired of quilting and just. want. to. be. done. already. (we’ve all been there, right?)

One key trick I love for triangle quilts is using a special ruler instead of messing with templates. The acrylic ruler gives me a sturdy base and keeps all my cuts precise. I purchased this one on Amazon and really could not live without this baby!

As far as the pattern itself goes, I love the way Shannon breaks down the steps for each size quilt. This pattern includes multiple sizes including baby, lap size, and throw size. I personally did the baby size, but something that makes this pattern fun is that the design stays constant throughout all sizing, but the pieces individually change sizes. This means you have super detailed cutting instructions depending on which size quilt you decide to make. You can purchase the quilt pattern here.

OK Back to the hand quilting!

If you need a hand quilting crash course check out these other blog posts: Hand Quilting Essentials and 10 Steps to Easy Hand Quilting to get started.

I used size 8 Perle Cotton thread and my favorite Big Stitch Needles. before starting to stitch, I marked my lines on my quilt with the back of a butter knife (the perfect way to create a crease that lasts just long enough!)

The design I picked was a strategic way to *hopefully* hide the fact that I used the wrong shade of white in some places. In some places I still think is is very obvious, but I definitely think the bold hand quilting helps add some extra character to the quilt! What do you think!?