Day 160 – Spiral Petals

Ah! Spring is most definitely here and flowers are already bursting into bloom!

I decided to celebrate by trying to combine two of my most favorite things: paisley designs and spirals. Squish them together and out comes Spiral Petals!

Today I finally got back to yoga after nearly a month of missing class for various reasons. I really got my butt kicked on the mat, but nowI feel great!

Over the last month I’ve been busy, busy, busy, but haven’t actually managed to get anything DONE! I’ve decided that being busy and feeling behind on everything really isn’t fun.

I don’t want to grind out my life trying to rush through projects, but I also don’t want to feel constantly squashed by the weight of all the many things I should, could, or need to be working on.

So instead, I’m just setting myself a list of 1 to 3 things to do each day. They can be as small as posting on this project, or as big as finishing the Winter Wonderland quilt pattern.

This way I’ll still feel the sense of accomplishment and “moving forward” without the stress of trying to do EVERYTHING all in one day. We’ll see if it works!

Inspiration – I love spirals! And I love paisley / pivoting designs! This design combines the two in a neat way with tear drops for a very simple design.

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. This is really very easy if you keep the initial spiral shape in your mind as you quilt. The tear drop is simply an echo of the spiral, so if you do that well, the whole design will turn out perfect.

Design Family – Pivoting. Paisley designs are called “paisley” or “pivot” not because they look like paisleys (they don’t), but because of the way they are formed.

This is probably the easiest design to create variations with because all you have to do is change your starting shape and you change the whole design!

Directional Texture – All directions. Paisley designs also have a gorgeous, all over texture because they flow and form from all directions.

Suggestions for Use – This design can go anywhere on your quilt: around complex designs and motifs or stitched big covering loads of surface area.

I’d start by trying this design over some big blocks. I keep meaning to quilt my Batik Beauty quilt. It’s already basted up and ready to go, so maybe I’ll pull it out and stitch Spiral Petals over a few of the blocks.

Feel free to use this free motion filler designs in your quilts,
and make sure to tell your friends where you learned it.

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