Free Motion Quilting Design #35 – Poinsettia

It’s time to free motion quilt Poinsettia! Am I in the Christmas spirit or what?! Today is a wonderful day: I doodled 20 new designs during breakfast and thought of 7 variations as I walked downstairs. I’m in a great mood!

While I know that Poinsettias in the middle of September might seem a little odd, I figure we should have designs a couple months early so that way we have time to actually do something with them.

What’s the point of waiting until winter to start your gift making anyway? I ALWAYS wait until the last minute for gift quilts, which is why for the last 2 years running my family has all received IOUaQ (I Owe U a Quilt) for Christmas. Even worse, I never get around making the quilts during the year either! I’ve owed my sister the same quilt for the last 2 years straight. Ugh. Maybe she’ll be happy with a new pair of socks!

Learn more about free motion quilting Poinsettia:

Inspiration – For this design I wasn’t humming Deck The Halls under my breath or finishing off the last of the spiked egg nog. Honest! Really it was inspired by the hankering to start a design in a different place. Every other design has been stitched from the edge of the quilting space. I get tired of doing the same old thing, so I broke thread and started in the center.

Of course, seeing how awesome this finished, I will definitely be designing more center fills!

Difficulty Level – Advanced. You’ll notice in the video how slowly I stitch this fill. Partly that’s due to wanting it to look very consistent with evenly spaced lines, and part of that is the amount of traveling and spacing necessary to make it look right.

Just take your time! It’s not a race to the finish to see who can come up with the most deranged looking poinsettia first. Slow and steady wins the race.

Design Family – Center Fill.

Directional Texture – I think this design calls for a new directional texture name. Maybe Center Focused? Your eye is definitely drawn to the middle of the shape.

Suggestions for Use – Since we’re thinking Christmas, this fill would look great on a set of coasters or ornaments. You could also use it in small areas in your quilts, like the large centers of flowers, where you want a nice center focused texture.

Feel free to share your suggestions for this design in the comments below!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day