Funky New Pattern – Tangled Snakes #227

Today we’re quilting a funky new pattern called Tangled Snakes!

What a wonderful weekend! Not only did I get back in the studio to create several new designs, I also started working on a new quilted jacket to wear this winter!

While designing the jacket, I’ve been thinking a lot about my favorite designs and trying to decide which to use in the background. It’s funny, my favorite designs are flames, pebbling, and McTavishing and this design contains a bit of all of them!

Inspiration – James recently came home with a plastic toy snake that was connected together with circles and pegs down the back. As soon as I saw it, I saw the potential for a new free motion design. Inspiration truly is everywhere!

Difficulty Level – Advanced. What makes this design tricky is the amount of traveling and space-gauging you need to be able to do in order to fit the snake shapes together and the pebbles within the snake shapes.

Just take your time and practice drawing this design a few times first. The overall texture and thread play it creates is really spectacular and absolutely worth the extra effort it requires!

Filler Design Type – Branching. This design works a lot like McTavishing, but you can also work it more like an echoing design like Flame stitch, so it can work in most areas of your quilt. The most challenging thing will be controlling the amount the thread builds up around the circles.

Directional Texture – All Directions. I think this design is going to rank in my top favorites because it creates gorgeous texture, dark thread play, and lots of movement all at the same time!

Suggestions for Use – This would be a good design to use in the medium sized areas of your quilts. If you place it somewhere too tight and complex, you might lose the interesting texture Tangled Snakes creates.

Likewise if you place this design in a huge area, it will be very time consuming to fill, so try to find the open medium sized areas of your quilts, like around applique blocks where this design can really shine!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day