Day 359 – Flame Turns

Moving on… would anyone like a new design today? Here’s a cool variation of Left Turn, Right Turn, Curvy Turns, and Angle Turns that incorporates a thicker turn and line down the center to create Flame Turns:

I’m still amazed by the awesome texture that comes from just turning left and turning right, then connecting the rows together across your quilt. It fills a space beautifully and as you can see in Shadow Self, it creates a texture that is both predictable, but also free form. It can’t get much better than that!

Difficulty LevelIntermediate. Although not a snap, this is a pretty easy design to stitch. First curve left, then curve right and work from one edge of your quilt to the other with this combination of stitches. As you stitch the next row, make sure to interconnect the two together so it forms a grid-like texture.

Design Family – Edge to Edge. This design is stitched in rows, but it could easily stretch across an entire quilt. I’d love to see a modern quilt filled with Flame Turns interconnecting, then the inside spaces filled with another design. Cool!

Directional Texture – 2 Directions. This is a bit weird because it is forming a horizontal and vertical grid, but it’s also wiggly…so…that’s probably going to create a free form grid like design that will work just about anywhere.

Suggestions for Use – I’m looking forward to experimenting with this Turn family of designs to see what happens when they work across a quilt on a large scale. Better yet, what happens when the turns are used as a foundation for more designs? So many questions to answer! I’d better go quilt!

Let’s go Quilt!

Leah Day

LeahDay

Leah Day has been teaching online since 2009. She's the creator of the Free Motion Quilting Project, a blog filled with thousands of quilting tutorial videos. Leah has written several books including 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs, Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day, and Mally the Maker and the Queen in the Quilt.

4 Responses

  1. Pat says:

    OOOOOW! I LOVE this design! I think this would look fabulous all over a quilt!

  2. Sally says:

    Wow. After watching your video I wanted to jump up and go try this.
    Then I scrolled down.

    Leah, I am not your mother. However, I would be proud to be. Keep up the wonderful work you do. You have a beautiful family. God Bless you.
    SallyKingemail@gmail.com

  3. Sharon says:

    Hey there Leah I just wanted you to know that I think this design is awesome….you have helped so many of us scaredy cats about FMQ in this last year and I wanted to let you know that I appreciate all your hard work and efforts and have learned so much from you, even if I did not try all of what you shared it has helped me to even start to try FMQ….Happy Holidays

  4. sewmuch2do says:

    THIS DESIGN ROCKS!!!! LOVE IT !!!! THANKS LEAH!!

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