Curly Quilt Fill

In my joy of sharing my mouth watering Chocolate Dipped Strawberries early this month, I completely forgot to talk about the quilting, especially the curly quilt fill used in the background.

Isn't it sweet? How about adorable? Cute? Charming? Delightful? Downright lovely? However it's described, the curly quilt fill is easy to stitch, whether using a longarm or a domestic sewing machine - let's see how!

First, some drawings. Start near a seam or an edge, working outward with a circle that curls into the center. Let the curl move inside the circle just enough without overdoing it. Too much, and it becomes a spiral.

Backtrack over the curl to a spot to start the next the curl, which curls in the opposite direction. Think of ram's horns when doing this.

Keep making curls to fill in the area, backtracking either a little or a lot to get to the desired area. 

Some areas really take on the ram horns idea, while other areas are more linear. The backtracking decides where the next curl will start. Let's see this curly quilt fill stitched out.

The size of the curls can also change for different looks, like on Ladybug Dance.

or stay a consistent size as in the background fill in Chocolate Dipped Strawberries.

It's totally up to the quilter and the quilt as to which one works better. Either way, that curly fill will be sweet, adorable, cute, charming, delightful, or downright lovely - you choose how to best describe it!

Happy Quilting!

Thank you for following!

Jump Stitch Quilting

Want to alleviate the tedium of pulling threads to the top at every start, when the next start is just stitches away? Want to make stitching a quilting design more efficient? Then try jump stitch quilting!

For owners of embroidery machines, this should be familiar.
Digitized designs employ 'jump stitches' to get from one area to another in a design. Sometimes the design uses stitches, but most of the time it's a jump stitch. That's un-stitched thread between different design areas, with lock stitches at each end.

In this picture from Brother, USA, the circled areas show how jump stitches are used in this embroidered design. 

I'm all about efficiency, so the jump stitch concept really came in handy yesterday when I was quilting overlapping lines. It was far easier to make jump stitches with lock stitches at each end, than to clip threads and start again pulling up and holding threads.

Below shows stitching up to the line, adding lock stitching at the line, then jumping over and restarting, with lock stitches, on the other side.

Then it's easy to continue the design, 

and repeat the process in the other direction, creating two jump stitches over the previous quilting.

Since each end is locked, those jump stitches can now be trimmed away, on the front and the back.

My design also required some straight lines behind these crossed bars, which meant more jump stitches. Because they're so flat, they're hard to see - just follow the white arrows, which shows half of them.

After stitching, they're all clipped to clean up the design.

And what a time saver! This was so much easier than locking, clipping the threads, moving to the new area, pulling up threads, and locking, just to stitch a few stitches. I could have backtracked to stitch this design, but one thread pass looks much nicer.

So, that's my tip for today - make use of jump stitches in a quilting design to get the needle where it needs to be, and to make more efficient use of quilting time.

Happy Quilting!

Thank you for following!

Dragon Fruit Quilt Fill

Today, it's all about the Dragon Fruit quilt fill.

Quilted on the United runner made for the Be A Diamond Blog Hop, it's a fill I created specifically for this runner. With all of the star prints, I wanted some kind of a star motif in the background. But drawing a star, and nesting them attractively in a small space was not an adventure I wanted to take on. Hmm, what else would look nice?

So, I got my handy piece of vinyl and my favorite Expo Vis-a Vis WET erase marker (affiliate link), and started drawing over the background space. I tried swirls and pebbles, swirls with feathers, right angled lines that crossed each other, triangles, and stars. Nothing felt right. 

Then I put the swirls together with straight line spikes - now the design is coming together. Add in some echoing around the spikes, and fill is born!

Below are the four steps on how to make one motif of the Dragon Fruit fill - it all starts with a curl, then back a bit to make a hook, add three triangle spikes, then echo back around those spikes.

Below are three of these motifs put together. Starting with the 'in' arrow, each motif is drawn with a changing swirl direction, so as to move around and fill in the space.

Now that the basics of drawing the Dragon Fruit quilt fill are covered, here it is in action:

Keep in mind that I was quilting this fill to get it done, and not to focus on perfection. That's only necessary for show quilts. But there are a couple of things to notice when quilting:

1. Don't worry if the echo is narrower, shorter, or even a bit curved. Or sometimes it's only halfway or missing. It depends on the amount of space that the machine is in at that moment, and the area that the machine needs to travel to next.

2. Backtracking is your friend. Use it in the ditches to move from one area to the next, or use it over previous stitching if all of a sudden the design is boxed in with nowhere to go. The golden rule is to not have more than 3 layers of stitching. More than that, and the thread buildup is really noticeable.

3. Just let the quilting flow! Repeat this mantra - curl, hook, spike, spike, spike, echo. Repeat. After several repeats, the design will become second nature.

So why is this named after Dragon Fruit? Well, hubby went shopping with me, and discovered Dragon Fruit.

Quite a beautiful pile, yes? Though we didn't buy one, their uniqueness stuck in my head.

With this view from the bottom, I think the Dragon Fruit fill is aptly named, don't you think?

Go ahead and bookmark this page for that one day when Dragon Fruit happens to be the perfect fill for your project. Be sure to send me a picture when the quilting is done - I'd love to share it with everyone!

Happy Quilting!

If you're already a follower - thank you!

Pantographs plus Custom Quilting

Last week, I had the opportunity to quilt Sally Sells Seashells for a friend of mine. 

Her top is based on the Nine Patch Pizzazz (affiliate link) book by Judy Sisneros,

and when we talked about the quilting for it, I suggested using a pantograph in most areas, with some custom quilting in the seashell blocks. She said, "Go for it!", and I must say, the quilt turned out FANTASTIC!

For all the non-computerized longarmers out there, here's a tutorial on how to insert custom quilting into a pantograph design.

For this quilt, the pantograph Ebb and Flow was chosen, 

as it has a lovely, repetitive wave design. Yes, the waves could have been free handed, but regular repetition was what we were after.

After deciding what areas receive custom quilting, in this case, the six seashell blocks, the quilt is loaded onto the frame. The first step involves stitching-in-the-ditch around the seashell blocks, then stitching as much of the pantograph as possible without running into those seashell blocks. And now the fun begins!

Blocking out the custom quilting area

Remembering that the laser pointer on the back of the machine represents where the needle is, the needle is moved to  a corner of the block. Note: what's shown is the lower corner of the block, since the top section is already done.

Keeping the needle in position, at the back of the machine
place an item to mark the laser point. I have rulers that I use, but you could use paper, tape, or sticky notes.

In  the picture above, the arrow points to the laser dot, representing where the needle is, and thus the corner of the block.

Moving the machine along the block edge

gives another spot to mark on the pantograph in back.

The drawn white line marks the bottom of the block.

Moving to the corner,

makes another spot to mark on the pantograph in back.

The sides of the block are checked in the same way, to make sure the ruler guides are straight, and not angled. The pantograph now looks like this,

with the white lines marking out the block, and the X meaning "don't quilt here!"

Quilting around the custom area

The pantograph is set up, the block area not to be quilted is marked, and everything is set to go! I will give you fair warning: this technique involves a lot of moving between the front and back of the machine. Just think of it as extra exercise, with the result worth it in more ways than one!

Starting the row as usual, the pantograph is stitched out, stopping until it comes just shy of the ruler. 

Moving to the front of the machine, a few stitches are taken to finish the pantograph line, and move the needle into the ditch.

Using ditch stitching allows for a continues line (no thread tie-offs! Yeah!!) to where the next pantograph line picks up in order to continue the pantograph back the other direction.

To  figure out where I was in the ditch in relation to the pantograph, I stitched a few stitches from the front, then peeked around to the laser/pantograph in back to see how close I was to the next stitch line. Once there, I went around to the back again to follow the pantograph.

Continuing with this technique throughout the quilt, each time stitching-in-the-ditch around the seashell blocks first before stitching the pantograph, made for beautiful background quilting.

Custom quilting

Once the pantograph quilting is in place, the custom quilting of the squares happens. This is the place to have fun! Using more stitch-in-the-ditch, some cross-hatching, stippling, and detail stitching on the shells made for blocks that really popped!

My  friend was so happy that this quilt went from ho-hum to WOW! with this extra bit of care and detail. She exclaimed, "You really made my piecing look good!", and with a comment like that, it was totally worth it!

Next time you have a quilt that could use a bit of extra WOW, try some custom quilting with your pantograph.

Happy Quilting!

Blended Quilting

Last week, while quilting the Holiday Forest runner, I was very conscious of making the background quilting blend in with the trees. And by that I mean making the background quilting in the small areas relate to each other, creating unity between all the small spaces.

Notice the landscape lines in between the trunks. See how they hit the trunks, follow the trunk for a small distance, and come back out again?

This is what I mean by 'blending'. It creates unified quilting between all parts instead of a bunch of separately quilted areas. It also makes the background quilting stay in the background, as the lines in the picture below appear to go behind the tree.

The drawn example below is what not to do. It creates a quilted area that doesn't relate to the other piecing - it just bounces back and forth. The background doesn't flow from one area to the next.

The correct way to quilt around pieced shapes is to have the quilting bump into the object, then stitch following the seam line, then resume quilting in the background. Yes, that means stitch-in-the-ditch.

The quilting moves to the element, stitches along side it, then moves away from the pieced element, ultimately creating a joining of all the elements.

Here's a closeup around one of the snowballs. 

The outline stitching around it blends in with the background stitching.

This concept applies to any background fill, not just the lines I've shown you. All it takes is a bit of planning, and the willingness to stitch-in-the-ditch. But the results are worth it!

Happy Quilting!