Day 130 – Graphic Flower

After seeing the beautiful orchids at the gardens yesterday, I’m hankering for a free motion flower design.

Here’s a cool one based off of graphic novels with loads of thread build up and dense stitching:

Today I’m spending most of the day getting things together for my lecture tomorrow night. I’ll be speaking in Greenville, SC to a group called Nimble Thimbles – I love their name!

The cool thing about this lecture is it’s not just a trunk show of everything I’ve made, it’s a lecture specifically on free motion quilting called 3 Dimensions of Design.

So this afternoon I’m going to make big posters of some of the filler designs: stippling, pebbling, paisley, and McTavishing to show the 4 basic fillers on a large and small scale.

Since I’m still in the process of mentally writing the lecture I might write the whole thing down as a blog post tomorrow. It’s a nice way to prepare and make sure I’m not going overwhelm anyone with way too much information.

But before I run off to start pulling quilts together, let’s learn how to stitch Graphic Flower:

Inspiration – I’m not a huge fan of graphic novels, but I do love comic books. I wanted to try to recreate the thick, graphic look of the artwork by building up several layers of thread with this design.

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. The hard thing about this design will be the thread build up. If your machine or thread can’t handle it, they will let you know!

Design Family – Center Fill. This design is started in the center of your quilting space, then stitched outward. This means this design will work great in open, uncomplicated areas like blocks.

Directional Texture – Center Focused. You really can’t help but see the big, giant flower shape staring at you straight from the center of this design! Make sure to place this somewhere it can really show off.

Suggestions for Use – I would use this design on a small project that could use some extra stiffness, like a journal cover or set of coasters.

Back of Graphic Flower

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.