15. Quilt a Building Block with Stippling
It’s time to learn about Stippling! This super popular free motion quilting design is a great choice for beginning quilters to tackle because there’s no travel stitching involved. The rule behind this design is simple – Just wiggle! and try not to cross your lines of quilting.
Because Stippling is so popular, I’ve actually shot many video of this design over the years. If you’ve never quilted Stippling, you might want to check out these videos and try out this design in a practice sandwich first and get familiar with the simple shapes and movement. Here’s a few posts and videos to check out from the past:
Lately I’ve been thinking of a fun analogy for quilting designs – it’s really like a relationship!
In order to quilt a design well, you have to first meet and see if you like each other. Some designs you stitch out will just not be friendly at first and you may need to meet other designs before you find the right one.
Then you get to know one another by hanging out a lot. You learn where the design works best, where it looks good, and the better you know it, the better you like it!
Understand that you’re never wasting time by stitching a design you know, or by practicing a design you’re learning. You’re just building a relationship that will make free motion quilting easier with every design you learn.
So a funny way to look at this block is as dinner date with Stippling. Try not to curse at him! He might be a bit random, but very wiggly all around!
A quick reminder if you haven’t yet joined us on this super fun quilt along – You can join anytime by picking up a copy of the Building Blocks Quilt Pattern right here!
So after stitching 1 inch, 1/2 inch, 1/4 inch, and 1/8 inch stippling – what is your favorite scale?
Were you able to shrink down your stitching, or did that feel like a struggle?
What did you think about quilting each section of the block in rows?
Do you need all your lines marked, or can you quilt this free hand without marks?
Share your experience and ask any questions you have about quilting Stippling on these multiple scales!
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
Great instruction! However, the video is really grainy. It was last week too. They were very clear before that, but now they are hard to see. Can you do anything about that? Thanks!
Hi there, video played just fine and not grainy at all for me. Hopefully your problem gets fixed 🙂
Mine is grainy also and stops and starts so the words don't always match the mouth movements. This has only happened over the last few weeks.
Hi Jacqueline – I've actually re-uploaded both videos that had issues, so the video now on this page is at the same resolution as all the others posted in this series. From what it sounds like, the issue might be with your internet connection, bot with the videos themselves.