Quilt Along #30 – Pivoting Designs and Paisley

It’s quilt along time and yes, if you’re a follower on Facebook you’ll know that after a weekend of food poisoning AGAIN I am feeling much better.  I swear I never want to feel this sick ever, ever again, but luckily I was able to stitch out most of my misery by binding two rows of the 365 quilt while watching Weeds.

Fortunately I’m now feeling well enough to get on the machine and have decided it’s time to MOVE ON.

We are officially leaving the world of Stippling and Independent Designs.  Yes, they’ve been fun, yes, there are tons more to stitch and to create, but the fact is, I’m getting bored with this family of designs.  I love em, but I can only focus on one family for so long.

So rather than beat each family of designs to death with months and months of intense focus, we’re going to start moving month by month to a new family.  That means on average we’ll play with 4 – 5 designs per month, some new, some old, but all of them fun and exciting to stitch on your quilts!

This month we’re focusing on Pivoting Designs and as promised in the UFO Sunday quilt along, I’m going to start stitching out these designs in my UFOs to hopefully knock out two birds with one stone.

I’m also needing to make videos easier for Josh to edit, so I’m attempting to talk and quilt at the same time.  I did this with my Craftsy class and it worked out pretty good so here goes!

Now if you remember back to Independent Designs, Stippling is kind of the mother of that whole design family.  All of the designs in that group are stitched and move around the quilt similar to stippling.

With Pivoting Designs, Paisley is the queen bee, so this is the best design to start with when learning about this family.  Paisley is also the simplest design because it’s based off a very simple shape: a tear drop:

To stitch Paisley, you first stitch a tear drop.  In order to create this shape, you will need to hit your original starting point (red dot) to close the tear drop completely.

Next, pivot (hence the name) off that starting point and swing up and around to create an echo.  As you stitch the echo around the tear drop, bring it in closer until you hit the starting point again.

Pivot and echo as many times as you like.  Seriously!  You can echo a single tear drop 10 times or 2 times, it’s entirely up to you.

To move on with the design, pick another direction and stitch a new tear drop.  Pivot and echo.

At times you will have to cut shapes in half, or squish and fit them into odd areas of your quilt.  Just try to keep the lines of stitching as consistent as possible with no huge gaps left open.

Yes, Paisley and most Pivoting Designs are going to create a slightly more dense texture on the surface of your quilts.  The areas where you start a new shape and pivot will always contain more thread and this design naturally has more travel stitching when you need to move from place to place.

But don’t be afraid of this density!  It adds a different texture, a different look and feel to your quilts, and no, it will not make your quilts unbearably stiff if you keep your scale nice and open.

Now when it comes to difficulty, personally I don’t believe any design is naturally “easier” or “harder.”  All designs have their own quirks, and as quilters we have quirks too!  In class I find students naturally quilt some designs easier than others. It really just depends on how your brain works and if this particular shape and movement feels natural to you.

To be honest, when I first started free motion quilting, I couldn’t stitch this design at all.  In fact, I hated it.

Every time I tried to stitch Paisley, my thread broke, or I got lost in the design.  We just weren’t a good fit.

It took a bit more time, a bit more experience, and switching thread before I gave Paisley a try again and suddenly found WHOA! I LOVE this design!  I began stitching multiple variations immediately and it remains one of the biggest design families in the project.

So don’t worry if this design feels like you’re pulling your teeth out the first time you try it.  Keep playing with it, watch other design videos, experiment, and don’t give up.  You may love it immediately or you may hate it intensely, but ultimately it’s a really important design to learn for free motion quilting.

Let’s go quilt!

Leah Day