Quilt Along #40 – Quilt Busting Flower Power

Whoa! Have we really been quilting along together for 40 weeks?! Yesterday I spent some time tooling around back at older posts and it’s amazing to see just how far we’ve all come this year.

Personally I’ve learned LOADS about filming designs and teaching quilting in real quilts, which was my major goal for this year. What was your goal? Did you meet it and find yourself quilting better than ever?

Working on The Duchess Reigns is reminding me the importance of goal setting and continual work for improvement. How much would you like to improve in 4 years? Where would you like to go with it? The sky is honestly the limit, but only if you know what you want and have a plan to get there!

So what is my major goal today? To help you learn how to knock out a quilt with a giant Sunflower!

If you’d like to check out the original video for this design, it’s right here stitched on a much smaller scale. Sunflower is a sweet design of overlapping petal shapes that makes it easy to stitch and place anywhere on your quilts.

Today we’re going to super size it with extra fries to cover and entire corner of the batik beauty quilt. Now keep in mind as you watch this, that Sunflower is a Quilt Buster meaning it will cover a huge amount of space, but it’s not a Speedy Buster meaning it’s not going to be the fastest design to quilt over a large area.

The reason? Lining up all the petal leaves can be a bit tricky, mostly because you need to rotate your quilt quite a bit to keep a clear line of sight on where you’re stitching.

So one solution would be to stitch the flowers around 12 inches in diameter. This size should be large enough to bust out a big section of your quilt, but small enough that you might not have to rotate and reposition as often.

Without further ado, let’s check out the video!

Looking to make free motion quilting easier on your home sewing machine?  In this video, I’m using 3 tools I really can’t quilt without: Queen Supreme Slider, Machingers Gloves, and Little Genie Magic Bobbin Washers. Click here to learn more about these tools and support the Free Motion Quilting Project!

So with Sunflower under your belt, what do you plan to do with it? I can see using this over the Modern Angles Quilt. Bust out a corner with a large sunflower, then surround it with a single fill like Stippling or Sharp Stippling.

Nice modern effect don’t you think? How many more ways can you use Sunflower to bust up your quilts? Play with it this week and share how you use it next week on the Free Motion Quilt Along!

Let’s go quilt!

Leah Day