There are many quilts that are beautiful because of the complicated nature of the piecing. Either with the diminutive size of the individual pieces or the angles that go into the placement of them, it doesn’t matter. Creating a beautifully pieced quilt can be very rewarding. But not all quilts are like that. Some are gorgeous with a very simple piecing pattern, but with intricate placement of colors. Denise’s quilt is one of these. She has created a lot of drama and beauty with the selection and placement of triangle pieces of fabric.

However, without the traditional blocks, sashings, and borders, how does one quilt it? Sometimes smaller shapes can be combined into larger shapes. You can see that these triangles can also form diamonds, both large and small. They can also create hexagonal shapes, which if outlined and filled could be quite striking. But none of that was working for me with this quilt. The colors are the stars and drawing out larger shapes wasn’t working for me. So I decided to stick to the individual triangle instead.

Triangle Grid Design

Just like squares in a grid, these triangles are also in a grid. I used a great grid design to fill in all the triangles across the whole quilt. There are a lot of ways to quilt with grids. Check out some of them in this Quilted Joy Clubhouse from January of 2021 all about grid based filler designs.

For Denise's quilt, starting in the corner, I quilted a small lower case “e” upside down in this case, to connect corner to corner. I then did a slip and slide wiggle down to the point of the triangle, then back across the base with a lower case “e” and slip and slide back up to the point again. It's simple but effective. This pattern will add texture and not fight with the color for dominance of the viewers attention. Watch the video below to see it in action!

What Color would you Quilt it with?

Color being a primary focus of this quilt, what color do you quilt it with? You can do something like gray. But I feel that you can be more bold with your color choice here. A variegated would be great with this quilt. Between Fantastico and Affinity we have some great colors that can bring out the pinks and blues on this quilt. But you could also use a single color like a shiny medium blue, or even chartreuse! I mean, why not? Whenever you can use lime green I say go for it! It can be so much fun! Changing color is also an option. Start with a darker red, changing to a lighter medium red just before midway. Switch to a light blue and finally finish with a dark blue.

Denise was actually able to quilt this in our shop with us. She rented 0ur APQS Lucy with the IntelliQuilter computerized quilting system. She decided on an all over edge to edge design called Onion Skin. The shape and flow of the pantograph definitely fit the feel of the quilt, making it a great choice. In fact, the custom triangle grid design that I suggested may have turned out very tight as the actually quilt was much smaller than I had supposed from the picture I saw. My design or her own, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Denise has a beautiful quilt she can be proud of and you've seen a triangle grid design that could look great in your next triangular quilt!