How to Quilt a Tree of Life Block with Undulation

It’s time to quilt our Tree of Life block. I decided to use my new favorite free motion quilting design, Undulation! I absolutely love the effect of these irregular echoes over this block. Learn how to quilt it with regular free motion quilting on your home machine:

Click Here to find the pattern for the Tree of Life Block. You’ll also find a bonus quilt pattern for the Tree of Life Quilt 78-inch quilt too!

Planning the Quilting Design

Before I jumped into quilting this block, I first planned my path. I wanted to quilt Undulation in two parts with two lines of quilting swirling up the tree and down with a weeping willow effect.

It’s never a waste of time to stop and plan your quilting path!

Even though this is All-Over Quilting, you can still emphasize the general shape of the piecing with the way the lines flow over the block.

I marked these two starting lines, then moved to my home machine to begin free motion quilting.

Quilting over Bulky Seams

I was using my regular darning foot when I began quilting and unfortunately ran into issues with the foot catching on the bulky seams. There are lots of half square triangles in this block and that makes for very bulky seams throughout the tree area.

Halfway through, I switched to the open toe foot included in the Deluxe Foot Set. This foot has a wide metal base that has excellent visibility. Even though I haven’t modified this foot to stop it from hopping, it doesn’t honestly irritate me because the base is so wide.

This darning foot has a wide open toe that makes it much easier to see and hop over bulky seams.

Stopping to Mark and Plan

It’s important to stop occasionally and check in on your design. I didn’t want the background around the tree to be quilted as densely as the area within the tree so I grabbed a marking pencil and marked the placement of those lines.

It’s never cheating to mark lines on your quilt! It’s such a time saver and even if you can’t follow the line exactly, no one will ever know. Once the lines are erased, all you see is the beautiful design you quilted in that area.

Quilting these large blocks is much easier with a flatbed sewing table.

Quilting to Scale

I’m trying to keep my quilting more open for the Friendship Sampler blocks so the quilt finishes nice and soft for a bed quilt. But to create the nice Undulation effect, I had to bring the quilting lines closer together in some places.

I love the effect of this design over this scrappy tree block!

I picked a few spots over the tree and trunk where the lines would flow together around 1/4-inch apart. Everywhere else, I tried to free motion quilt with the lines further apart, on a 1/2 – 1 inch scale or more.

This created a very soft quilt block that has a beautiful texture on both the front and back.

I love it when the back of the block looks as good as the front!

This is definitely my favorite quilting design so far! I can’t wait to try it again in another block. But I know quilting all over those half square triangles might be making you wince. I have another quilting design to share next week that pays more attention to the triangles so you might like that better!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

Check out the other tutorials I shared for this Tree of Life quilt block:

• How to cut scraps for the Friendship Quilt Along
• Piece two at a time half square triangles
• How to piece the Tree of Life Block