Free Motion Quilting Design Electric Paisley

It is so good to be home! I wandered around yesterday putting everything back in place and I almost felt like hugging my Horizon. After 3 days of free motion quilting on my Bernina Activa (the machine I use for traveling), I’m very happy to be back to my studio, stitching on my regular machine.

So let’s get back to the project! Nothing makes life feel like it’s back to normal like creating some new designs. Here’s what happens when the popular Paisley quilting design sticks his finger in a socket – it becomes Electric Paisley!

Today I’m back to work on my Australian Shadows Quilt. I’ve been quilting this on a 1/2″ scale so it’ll be the perfect throw for the couch, very soft and cuddly.

This also means the quilting has gone by very quickly and now I only have a bit in the borders left and then it’s binding time!

I haven’t decided what stitch to use in the long border areas. Of course, the fabric in this area is interesting enough I could just stitch along the edges of the print. That would make for a neat design and a quick finish.

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. Stitching the first line, then travel stitching all the way back to the beginning is really the biggest challenge with this design. As I said in class last week, if you stitch off a few times, don’t worry about it! No one is going to see a few mistakes and it might even add to the design.

Design Family – Pivoting. This still remains one of my favorite design types because it fills your space quickly, but you can easily bend and twist the designs around odd areas. I’d love to see this design stitched on a larger scale. Maybe this is what I’ll use in the borders of my quilt!

Directional Texture – All Directions. Straight lines and sharp angles always create a slightly different, more graphic texture than flowing, curving lines. Something about all those straight lines gives the design multi-directional texture, but also flattens it out at the same time.

Suggestions for Use – The neat thing about this design is it can really be used as either the background area (an area you want to recede or flatten in the background of your quilt) or you can stitch in the more dominate, showy areas.

I think this would be really interesting to use in a landscape quilt for the air or water. While it’s certainly not what most people would think of as a good water design, I think it could have a very neat effect!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day