Rules for the Free Motion Quilting Project Challenge

All big challenges should start with some guidelines to keep things on track! As you know, my goal is to create 365 free motion quilting designs. Here are the rules I’m following for the Free Motion Quilting Project:

1. One new filler stitch must be created every day – I’m not allowing myself to cheap out by using the already popular filler stitches so Stippling, McTavishing, Pebbling, and Paisley are off limits!

2. These designs must all be fillers – Filler designs are meant to be dense and compact so the space between the quilting lines shouldn’t exceed 3/8-inches.

3. The designs must be free motion and continuous line – Each design must be able to be created without breaking thread and only with a free motion quilting (no walking feet or feed dogs allowed!)

4. No Marking! – Free motion quilting designs are simplistic enough that they should be able to be created with no marking or guidelines of any kind. All of these designs can be quilted by memorizing the simple rules of the design, then repeating those rules to fill up the quilting space.

More Free Motion Quilting Fun!

That’s it for the official rules, but here are some other fun bits I going to try to include whenever possible:

• Inspiration for design – I want to share photos of my inspiration if possible. Now that I’m looking for designs, I’m seeing interesting patterns and textures everywhere! From the veins of leaves, to the wiggly layers of my husband’s reef tank, there are potential free motion quilting designs all over the place!
• Difficulty level – I’m not sure exactly how to rate the difficulty level. Some designs feel challenging for me to quilt, but will that hold true for everyone? Maybe a scale from 1 to 10 by how likely you’ll want to punch me after trying a design?
• Directional texture – Some designs have very flat texture while others are like air flowing in all directions. A lot of designs are very linear and add horizontal or vertical texture. This will be interesting to note if you’re planning to use designs in art quilts or landscapes.
• Suggestions for Use – The 5 million dollar question – where will this design work best? Would this design look better on an art quilt or a bed quilt? Will it work on a large scale or is it best on a tiny scale?
• Video on how to Quilt the Design – Yep, the ultimate challenge! Can I share a video of these designs as I go? I’m not promising these will be up immediately, but wouldn’t it be cool if all 365 had videos???

This is going to be so much fun! Click Here to check out Quilting Design #1 – Shadow Waves.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

Click Here to find all the designs shared so far on the Free Motion Quilting Project.