Machine Quilting Split Personality, Design #480

Last month I was playing around with new walking foot designs and stumbled across a very simple combination – straight and curvy lines. Immediately I realized this combination would be super simple and easy to quilt. Truly it’s the best Split Personality!

I created this design when I was working on Sheri Cifaldi Morrill’s first Road Work quilt. I was looking for a very simple design that was more than straight lines, but not too wild and crazy which would be distracting on this simple modern quilt.
Ruler Foot machine quilting tutorial
I quilted that version using ruler foot quilting and Template #6 from the Dresden Plate Template set, but I want you to see that you can also quilt this design free hand using normal free motion quilting. See what I mean in this new quilting video:
Would you like to find a book of inspiring quilting designs to keep next to your machine? Check out my book Free Motion Quilting from Daisy to Paisley, a mini book of beginner quilting designs!
Learn how to machine quilt Split Personality in this beginner tutorial
Split Personality is a super simple combination of shapes, but I think there’s a lot of room to play with this design. Let’s learn more about it:

Difficulty Level – Super Beginner. You really can’t find an easier design to quilt! Rows of parallel lines like straight lines or curves are always easy to quilt. 
I do think it’s a good idea to mark a line across your quilt to mark the point you switch from straight lines to curves. If I didn’t have that line, I would probably forget what I was doing and just quilt straight across the space.
Design Family – Edge to Edge. The lines of this quilting design are stitched across from one edge to the other. This could be from ditch to ditch if you were quilting blocks or sashing. To reach the next line of the design, just travel stitch in the ditch, then rotate the quilt and stitch the next straight and curving line.
Machine quilt Split Personality
If you were quilting a big quilt on your home machine, I’d start in the center and quilt to the outer edges. This will ensure the layers of the quilt can come together evenly with the least chance of puckers and pleats.
Where Do We Quilt It? – Designs like Split Personality work great in the open spaces of your quilt like sashing or borders. This would also be a very easy All Over Quilting design because you could quickly and easily quilt half your quilt with straight lines and the other half with curves.
What do you think of this new quilting designs? Does it look easy to you or challenging to space the lines evenly? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *