Day 126 – Polka Dot Parade

Sorry about not posting yesterday! We were snowed in and my voice decided to make an appearance so we shot the missing basting video yesterday afternoon.

It turned out even better than the first version. YAY! I’ve got loads to tell you about it, but first let’s learn Polka Dot Parade:

free motion quilting | Leah DayOh yeah, I’m feeling much better! I had to laugh at all the comments from the last couple of days. I feel like I now have 10 mothers all yelling at me to go to bed!

I think I probably did have some weird kind of sinus infection, but using a Neti pot with grapefruit seed extract always flushes it out. It’s a bit painful, but totally worth it because in only 12 hours I was feeling much, much better.

Okay enough about my snot, let’s learn how to stitch this polka dotty design!


Click Here if the Video Does Not Appear

Inspiration – I was pondering Pebbling the other day and wondering if there are any more variations I haven’t thought of.

Suddenly my eyes lighted on the green polka dot fabric I recently bought to make yoga pants out of. Of course! Fill an occasional circle of Pebbling and you get Polka Dots!

Difficulty Level Advanced. I personally don’t think this design is super difficult, but there is a lot of traveling that sometimes gives me fits if my needle and thread decide not to play nicely together.

Design Family – Stacking. All these polka dots stack together just like real pebbles to form the design. This means that this design can go ANYWHERE on your quilt with no trouble at all.

Directional Texture – No Direction. This is a pretty flat, directionless design, but that doesn’t mean it’s boring. Often the most admired parts of my quilts are the ones featuring pebbling.

Who knew rocks could look so cool when stitched on a quilt???

Suggestions for Use – I really think this design has limitless uses, but I’ll probably use this one in the centers of my Grandmother’s flower garden quilt.

That quilt is on my list of “get around to it” this year, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not. In order to finish it I will have to uggh….applique. Hahaha!

Yeah, I’m not too psyched about that, but I know if I do it right that will be one knock your socks off flower garden quilt. Come to think of it, that would make for a pretty good name for it!

Back of Polka Dot Parade

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.

4 Responses

  1. Judy Modica says:

    Leah
    This reminds me of antique lace items I have inherited from my husband's Italian Grandma. I'll think of it as "Grandma's Lace!" The quilting filler looks so real, it looks like it could breath like real lace.

  2. Anonymous says:

    We can't go quilt – you did not TELL us all the other stuff you were going to ……

  3. Anonymous says:

    Leah,
    This Judy thinks it looks like antique lace! A very usable filler what ever name it carries.

  4. Ethne says:

    Glad you are feeling better. Another lovely design Leah.
    Funny I've been thinking of a feather design over the last few days – not the ususal quilting feather format but a feather feather, even started to try and doodle it! Not much success yet though.

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