Day 211 – Jagged Plain

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

It’s a beautiful Labor Day weekend and FINALLY the weather is starting to cool down and feel a bit like the fall. This is absolutely my favorite time of year because everything seems to be restarting after the summer break.

And speaking of restarting, I’ve had many quilters writing in confused about what I’m doing with the How Do I Quilt This?! Series. Many expressed wishes that fillers could be returned for Monday and Tuesday and the series be run on another day, maybe Thursday or the weekend.

So let’s get back to a more regular schedule and move on to day 211 today! This is one of the foundational designs I promised last week that’s very similar to Desert Sand:

The easiest way to make a quick variation of any design is to take curvy lines and make them straight! This design was created by taking the flowing, curving lines of Desert Sand and making them sharp and jagged.

Inspiration – While writing From Daisy to Paisley, I knew I wanted to include Desert Sand because it was in the Beginner Free Motion Fillers DVD, but I didn’t have any other beginner level foundational designs to go with it.

So I pulled out a piece of paper and spent a little time doodling and came up with this design and one other, Ocean Current, just for the book.

This experience taught me that many designs can be created just while writing, and it was a fun way to come up with two new beginner level designs.

Difficulty Level – Beginner. This is a very simple design based on a single, jagged line. Once you fill your quilting area with the jagged line, the next step is simply to echo this line multiple times until the entire quilting space is filled.

When using this design on a large scale and with All Over Quilting, you would first take your jagged line out to the side of the quilt, then echo it back into the center, then to the same for all the other sides. This would establish your foundation, break your quilt up into quadrants, and allow you to fill the quilt on a large scale.

Design Family – Foundational. Most of the foundational designs I’ve shared so far have been very complex, involving a lot of travel stitching in order to complete the design. With Jagged Plain, I was really trying to simplify the idea so it would be easier for a beginner to tackle.

Directional Texture – All Directions. Because your foundational design can go in all directions, so too will your texture! For some reason straight line designs want to recede into the background more than curving designs, so keep that in mind when adding Jagged Plain to your quilts.

Suggestions for Use – Honestly, I’m really intrigued by what a plain piece of solid fabric would look like stitched with Jagged Plain in All Over Quilting. It might be a good excuse to make a very funky, nontraditional baby quilt!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

Day 194 – Desert Sand