Day 118 – Mitosis

Have you heard of the Scientific Quilter yet?

Darla emailed be way back in November and we immediately hit it off. I’m a former biology major and can definitely appreciate looking at quilting from a scientific angle.

Darla inspired me to create a design using my biology background! Here’s Mitosis:

free motion quilting | Leah Day

Guess what!? I started filming the beginner DVD today! YAY!

Okay, enough great news, let’s learn how to stitch Mitosis:

Inspiration – The Scientific Quilter is actually a podcaster, which means Darla records an audio MP3 of herself talking about scientificy quilty things.

You can download these podcasts directly to your Ipod or to your computer and listen anytime you want!

Difficulty LevelIntermediate. Mitosis is a fairly simple design based on free form feathers. If feathering has been difficult for you to master, give this design a try and practice until you get the hang of it!

Design Family – Edge to Edge. This design is worked from one edge of your quilting space to another. It probably won’t work very easily in tight, complicated areas for this reason.

Directional Texture – Two directions. You can definitely see a horizontal or vertical texture with this design, so make sure to put it in borders or sashing where the feathers can really show off!

Suggestions for Use – I think Mitosis has a lot of potential to quickly fill large areas of your quilt. Look at the blocks of my Super Quick Quilt. Just stitch one big mitosis in the center and each block would be finished in no time!

Back of Mitosis

free motion quilting | Leah Day

Feel free to use this free motion filler designs in your quilts,

and make sure to tell your friends where you learned it.

Click here to support the project by visiting our online quilt shop.

 

Let’s go Quilt!

Leah Day

LeahDay

Leah Day has been teaching online since 2009. She's the creator of the Free Motion Quilting Project, a blog filled with thousands of quilting tutorial videos. Leah has written several books including 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs, Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day, and Mally the Maker and the Queen in the Quilt.

7 Responses

  1. Debbie says:

    Leah,
    I love this one. I just finished piecing a quilt and need a border quilting pattern. I think this will do the trick, especially in the corners. I often use a design I call stacked teardrops that create either a feather appearance or a 60-ish flower pattern. It just depends on how I pack or stack them. Anyway, the corners have been my problem and this will work well for me.
    I am really looking forward to your talk/class next month at our guild meeting.
    Debbie in Mauldin, SC

  2. Justine says:

    Love it! I'm a retired science geek, now aspiring fabric artist and I love it when the 2 disciplines collide! Justine

  3. Ethne says:

    What another lovely pattern this will go in the Round Robin top when I get started – some practice required first though

  4. Anonymous says:

    Leah, this is off topic but the link here has a white quilt with stains!! you have to scroll down through several topics…. the quilter is Sharon S who has won all sorts of awards.

    Mitosis….. can't remember if that is plant or animal process? The quilt process is very soothing……

  5. Urban Crunch says:

    This one is very cool!
    Jalcyn

  6. Anonymous says:

    Leah

    Thanks for the shoutout on this post. I never thought of mitosis and 'feather' quilting designs going together, but they work here. I suppose for more complicated designs, you could line them up randomly, but I don't remember exactly if all the cells line up and split in the same direction.

    This really has an area that your eye is drawn to the ends of the mitosis, which could be good for the effect you're looking for. You could probably do borders front/back or side/side for different looks.

    Thanks again Leah, keep it up!

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