Learn How to Quilt Night Storm, Design #520

by LeahDay · Published September 21, 2021 · Updated September 14, 2021

I’m combining zigzags and bouncy curves to quilt Night Storm today! This crazy combination of shapes forms a truly unique design:

Quick Links from this free motion quilting tutorial:

Click Here to learn more about my home sewing machine – You don’t need a massive machine to learn free motion quilting. You just need a sturdy machine and a willingness to practice!

Deluxe Foot Set – This set includes two styles of walking feet, a darning foot, and a ruler foot! These are the feet I use for machine quilting on my Eversewn machine.

I’m also quilting on a Janome 1600 set up on a Grace Hoop Frame. This makes quilting feel so much easier because the machine is moving on wheels instead of the quilt being pushed over a table.

Learn more about machine quilting Night Storm:

Difficulty Level – Beginner. Night Storm definitely looks harder than it actually is to stitch. You’ll first quilt the zigzag shape, then surround it with bouncy echoes. To expand the design, just stitch another zigzag and echo cluster. You will need to be able to hit exact points in the design, but even if you miss, I think Night Storm is complex enough to hide most mistakes.

Design Family – Stacking. The Night Storm shapes stack together to form this design. While this is a lot more complex, the basic idea is very similar to Pebbling.

Where to Quilt It? – This quilting design is time consuming so I wouldn’t advise using this as an All-Over Quilting design (unless you want to be quilting your quilt for the next 10 years!). Instead I’d use Night Storm as an accent design, possibly in the background of an art quilt or sashing of a traditional quilt. It will look best on a small scale, so this is a design that’s going to work best in small doses in small quilts.

Are you still searching for the perfect design for your next quilt? Check out the latest designs shared to our Quilting Design Library here.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day