How to Machine Quilt Fanfare – #474
It’s Friday which means it’s time for a new free motion quilting design. Ta Da Da-Da Da-Da….imagine a trumpet fanfare…
I’m calling this cool quilting design Fanfare! I love designs that fill based on spirals because once you set the starting lines, the rest of the design is super easy to quilt.
See what I mean in this new beginner quilting tutorial:
Click Here to find the book 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs and challenge yourself to quilt a new design every day of the year!
Now let’s learn a bit more about this Fanfare quilting design…
Difficulty Level – Beginner. As you can see in the video, I marked the starting spiral on my quilt with a marking pencil, and then quilted on the marked lines.
Nope, this isn’t cheating, it’s awesome! There are two skills to master with machine quilting – quilting on a line and quilting without lines. This particular quilting design will help you build both skills and it looks really pretty too. Win, win, win!
The bouncy echoes running down the spiral are pretty easy to quilt. Just slow down and bring your hands closer to the needle so you don’t overshoot the spiral line.
Design Family – Foundational. The spiral line begins this design and sets the base. I mentioned in the video that you might be able to fit this into a border, just interconnecting two spirals together. I played with it a bit as a Zentangle design and so far just made a mess.
Don’t worry, the same rule for quilting holds for drawing. In this case I’m going to throw more ink at it!
The trick is keeping the bouncy echoes of the Fanfare design to one side of the spiral. That could be fixed by doubling the starting line and quilting bouncy echoes up both sides a bit like a quilted feather design. That might work better and look more balanced on your quilt.
Where do we quilt it? – I think Fanfare will look best in large blocks or cornerstones. If you begin with a large spiral, then add small bouncy echoes, the quilt will look great and remain soft.
Where do you plan to quilt Fanfare? Do you like spiral based designs? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
