Day 202 – Bed of Roses

This design is also featured in the DVD Beginner Free Motion Quilting Fillers, as well as the ebook From Daisy to Paisley.

It’s Monday again which means more fillers!

I’ve recently realized that I’ve been really shortchanging the number of flower inspired designs here on the project and decided to do something about it.

Since roses are my favorite flowers, I think we need to learn how to stitch a bed of roses on our quilts!

Today I’m pulling everything together to head to Rock Hill, SC to see the York County Quilter’s Guild!

Tonight I get to present my favorite lecture on the 3 Dimensions of Design (color, shape, and texture). I have a few more quilts to show this time around and I think it will make for a much better presentation.

But before the lecture, I’m heading into town early to tour the YLI thread headquarters! I’m really excited to see how thread is made. So often I take the millions of colors and thread types for granted so it will be great to see all the work that goes behind one spool of thread.

So while I run upstairs to pull Shadow Self and Winter Wonderland off the walls, you sit tight and learn how to quilt Bed of Roses:

Inspiration – There are a few flowers I’ve really tried to capture in threads, but this time I really wanted a very cartoony version of the rose.

Cartoons and comic books are great inspirations for filler designs because they often take complex shapes and break them down into very simple lines. Roses can be very complex, but when simplified down to the cartoon version, they are fairly easy to stitch in free motion.

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. This design is basically a simplified version of Oil Slick and the hardest part I found was forming the initial rose shape. It’s so wiggly and wobbly it can sometimes wiggle out of your control!

Design Family – Stacking. This design is formed by stacking the wiggle rose shapes together. Because you can control the size and shape of each rose, this design should work well in all areas of your quilts.

Directional Texture – All Directions. The spirals within each rose really adds a nice flowing movement within this design.

Suggestions for Use – A quilter emailed me this weekend asking for the perfect filler design to go on her daughters rose quilt. Apparently the quilt was made with rose fabrics and I think it also had rose appliques. It looks to me like this design is made for such a quilt!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

Day 89 – Oil Slick