Day 82 – Trailing Leaves

Argh! I’m going through computer withdrawal!!!

Friday night I had planned ahead and started uploading Volume 2 to my manufacturer at 6 pm because it ties up my computer for 17 hours.

Saturday morning I check on the upload. It was done (YAY!) and I was about to get started working when I realize that I totally screwed up the upload! I forgot to add a bar code and my website links to the DVD.

Unfortunately this meant that I had to re-upload the WHOLE thing, another 17 hours!

So that’s why I’ve been horribly absent from the blog.

To make up for this lapse in new, awesome quilting inspiration (I know you were all going through withdrawal too), I’m going to post both a new design and a new video on organizing your fabric.

So on to the new design: Trailing Leaves:

free motion quilting design trailing leaves

This design really has an awesome texture. I can’t believe I’ve not done one like this before, it’s so obvious!

But with the leaves changing and winter definitely on it’s way, this is a great time for this design!

Inspiration – Fall…leaves changing…what more inspiration do I need? I’ve been playing around a lot with leaf shapes as you’ll see later this week!

Design Family – Edge to Edge. The leaf shapes are filled working from one edge of your quilting space into another. This means that this design will work nicely in the open, uncomplicated areas of your quilt, but probably not as well around tight areas.

Difficulty LevelAdvanced. Don’t be intimidated! This is definitely a design that takes more practice to master due to the traveling involved, but that doesn’t mean it’s rocket science. Practice makes perfect!

Directional Texture – 2 directions. The way I’ve stitched this in a row makes the leaves have a very horizontal or vertical texture. Of course, you can always stitch it more randomly and it will have an multi-directional texture instead.

Suggestions for Use – I can definitely see it stitched in brown, yellow, red, and orange threads for a beautiful fall inspired design.

If you’d like some practice on this design, grab some off white fabric around 14″ wide and 3 ft long, sandwich it, and stitch Trailing Leaves from one end to the other with pretty fall colored thread.

By the time you get to the end, you will definitely have this design under your belt and a pretty table runner too!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

LeahDay

Leah Day has been teaching online since 2009. She's the creator of the Free Motion Quilting Project, a blog filled with thousands of quilting tutorial videos. Leah has written several books including 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs, Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day, and Mally the Maker and the Queen in the Quilt.

6 Responses

  1. Ethne says:

    Oh Leah – I love this pattern
    And what a disappointment for you – thinking you were getting on top of things only to have the microprocessors play games with you

  2. Laura says:

    I love this post and Trailing Leaves pattern. I'm on vacation this week and brought some fabric to practice and that's definitely one I'm going to do.
    Laura T

  3. I've got to practice this one since I'm making a tree quilt right now.

  4. Kate says:

    I think this one may be my all time favorite!!! Love it.

  5. Karen Smith says:

    I love this one! So beautiful.

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