What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

A post in three parts One. I love teaching color. Color is delightful, beautiful, complicated, simple, personal, unique, common, playful, as delightfully messy as mud and as wildly clean as rainbows after a summer storm. There are several things I’m doing with color right now: Showing the remake of Split Complementerity on the great pict-o-gram… Continue reading February 13, 2026

The freemotion design Paws is one of those designs that creates a lovely texture. You just want to pet the quilt!

This design works well for quilts with themes like animals, pets, water, sea, ocean, rain, weather, wind, flying, birds, and swimming. Is there anything else that this design reminds you of?

Pattern Tutorial

Create the dynamic design Paws by moving in all directions. The design sequence its pretty simple; curve round and add a teardrop or a paisley shape inside of the curve.

The teardrop is a symmetrical shape, while the paisley is not; it has a curve. Mix ...

This cute filler freemotion design is a variation and the classic Pebble design. Add a curl on this inside to create the look of a cinnamon roll or the rolled up sides of a cinnamon stick.

The Cinnamon design works well for quilts with themes like Autumn, Fall, Winter, Christmas, cooking, pastry, cake. It can also be used in art quilts to represent water, bubbles, fossils, shells or various organic items.

Pattern Tutorial

This Pebble variation works like most do; travel around the circle to add decorative elements or to get to the spot for your next circle.

The circles ...

This meandering freemotion design Mistletoe is open, airy and whimsical. It resembles a mistletoe plant but not exactly, making this design more versatile than just a Christmas quilting design.

The design consists of a series of two leaf shapes, two feathers and one or more small circles. The circles on sticks will help you travel to a new spot for the next sequence.

Pattern Tutorial

This design is built on a sequence with three design elements: leaf shapes, feathers and a circle on a stick.

Move into the area you want to fill with your design and try to use ...

The edge to edge design Cogs is based on a soft curl surrounded by a boxy echoes and hops.

This funky design would be lovely on a quilt for a person who likes to know the inner workings of a piece of machinery. On the other hand, this freemotion design would work well within a mix of various flower designs too. 

The elements within the sequence of Cogs are pretty simple. A soft curl, a series of boxy shapes as an echo around to the curl and then to complete the shape, add a series of hops around it all ...

Halloween is getting closer, and I have a few small quilty projects planned to get done before then. I have shared a few freemotion designs in the past that suit the scary season, and I will share them again below.

This weeks’ design is called Hair, maybe not specifically named after Cousin Itt from the Addams family, but if the shoe fits…! The random and free-flowing design Hair looks just like ghosts flying and tumbling through the air, don’t you think? Maybe it makes you think of flowing water or kelp too. The edge to edge design Hair is ...

Let’s do another zigzag design, which also works in sashings and borders. This week’s design is named Coral.

This design is based on fat curls and echoes and it can transition corners without stopping and breaking thread.

This whimsical design is very suited for projects with themes like the ocean, the sea, nature, octopus tentacles, kelp, coral, marine animals, ferns, and the forest.

Pattern Tutorial

The design can be quilted in any direction, horizontal, vertical or diagonal. In the tutorial drawings and video footage you will find all of these angles used.

In this tutorial I will use ...

This interesting and simple grid design is based on wide wishbone designs placed on top of each other. It can be used as an allover, or just in a block or border. 

The design will look great on projects with a theme like farm yard animals. Don’t you think it looks like two layers of chicken wire, but then placed at right angles of each other? I can also see this pattern being used on clutch bags with a metallic thread. The grid is so beautiful!

This wishbone-based grid is pretty simple to execute once you have marked a ...

Strut your feathers!

The design Peacock is composed of pretty standard shapes, the design just look complex because various shapes are all thrown in together into one sequence.

The Peacock design is an intricate allover that is elegant and elaborate. The denser edge to edge is suited for bags, placemats and maybe even a quilt coat.  It looks great on projects with themes like peacocks, birds, flowers, florals, nature, elegance, exuberance, exotic and mysterious gardens.

Pattern Tutorial

Don’t let the multi-step designs hold you back. You are probably very familiar with the separate design elements of this pattern; a ...

This sweet and magical grid design is based on a clamshell pattern. The design is pretty dense and it would be perfect for a bag or backpack. This grid design looks great on projects with themes like nature, plant, flowers, butterflies, fairies, fairytales and fantasy.

The design is pretty dense and it would be perfect for a bag or backpack. This grid design looks great on projects with themes like nature, plant, flowers, butterflies, fairies, fairytales and fantasy.

The pattern is based on the work by Jen Eskridge of Quilty Quill, and it is featured in her book “Quilted Clamshell ...

This fun and whimsical grid border design is based on a series of loops and echoes. It can be used in a wider border with some simple pre-marked lines. This playful border design looks great in modern quilts or quilts intended for children.

This fun and whimsical grid border design is based on a series of loops and echoes. It can be used in a wider border and a few pre-marked guidelines will help tremendously with stitching this design out evenly.

Pattern Tutorial

This loop-based border design takes a step back to move around one of the loops before continuing ...

It has been a while since we talked about zigzag quilts. In 2022 I put together several resources for you about zigzags. I will be sharing these again in this blogpost, so keep reading.

Zigzag quilts are pretty easy to piece, but how do you quilt them? You could definitely choose an allover / edge to edge design, but you can opt for a design that shows off the zigzag angles more by placing a design inside of each zigzag row. You could even do different designs in each row.

Let’s take a closer look at one design that was ...

Before we delve into this week’s design, I wanted to let you know that there will be another Free Motion Quilting Summit in two weeks time! This multiple day free event focuses on all things freemotion. I think you would really enjoy taking part.

Maybe you spotted my face in amongst the teachers read more

Celtic, Austrian or Chinese knot?

This elegant freemotion border design Knot is a variation of the Ribbon Candy design. It can be used in a wider borders and a few pre-marked guidelines will help tremendously with stitching this design out evenly. 

This border design looks great in quilts with themes like weddings, knotting, Austrian knots, Celtic designs, ribbon candy, hearts, lace, and tatting.

Pattern Tutorial

It is basically one loop after the other ...

Are you looking for an adventurous quilting pattern?

The design Flight Tracker is a fun design with lots of angular shapes, making it a relatively easy allover design. This fun design looks great on projects with themes like travel, geography, airplanes, adventure, and discovery. 

Each airplane is just a little bit bigger than 1 inch, but you can go as big as you like! The design elements make it easy to fill awkward spots and the changes in direction allow enough time to think through your next step. 

Pattern Tutorial

You don’t need a ruler for this design. The ...

Go get your poofy batting out!

The elegant and random design Flutter looks SOOOO GOOD with a poofy batting, I promise!

The allover looks great on projects with themes like butterflies, nature, the sea and ocean, water and waterfalls, birds and feathers. What does this design remind you off? To me, these are fluttering shapes, not specifically a butterfly or water droplets in a waterfall.

Each feather is about 2 inches long in this sample, but you could easily enlarge that measurement. The design is especially suitable for use on a machine where you can see your fabric really well ...

Have you counted your lucky stars lately?

I hope you have your loved ones close and that they are happy and healthy. Sending out all the healing thoughts to those who need them.

The wonky diamonds in this stitch out design Lucky Stars are about 1 inch in length, but I can imagine them being at least 3 inches long too.  It looks great on projects with themes like Christmas, universe, stars, plants, vegetation, nature, jewels, jewellery.

This meandering design uses arched lines to connect the sets of 3 wonky diamonds. These arched lines make it possible to fill those ...

Calling all 3” and 6” borders! read more

Sometimes simple is best!

Today’s freemotion design is variation of the classic Stipple. The Comb design gives a bit more structure as there is a sequence of movements, but you are free to change up to rules to suit your needs!

The FMQ design is based on two shorter ‘fingers’ and one longer one. This longer one moves over the two shorter ones to ‘encapsulate’ them. If there is no room to do the actual ‘comb over’, let that longer shape move wherever it needs to go to fill your space.

Because of the ‘two short, one long’ sequence ...

Wallflowers, vintage tiles or star bursts? What does this quilting design look like to you?

The freemotion design Wallflower is a simple grid based quilting design that goes well with themes like flowers, tiling, kitchen, bathroom, vintage, retro, stars and the universe. Depending on your grid size, you may apply it as an edge to edge or as a background filler.

I lost the video footage of me quilting out this design and I had to redo it. You may spot the difference in fabric and thread colors in the photos. Redoing this design wasn’t a problem at all ...