Quilting Design #9 – Henna Fooffy

I’ve found an excellent website filled with traditional Henna designs this week. Today’s free motion quilting filler is inspired by a Henna “Fooffy” design element:

While most quilters wouldn’t immediately think of Henna body art designs as sources for free motion quilting inspiration, I do! In fact, these traditional designs lend themselves very well to free motion quilting because of the way they are created.

When you have Henna applied, the artist works with a small bag with a tip, almost like a pastry bag, filled with liquid Henna pigments. These pigments smear very easily, so they’re always applied in a continuous line fashion.

Even better, most Henna designs are also very simplistic shapes that are repeated numerous times to give an all over effect – just like free motion quilting!

Learn more about quilting Henna Foofy

Inspiration – Henna designs.

Difficulty Level – Beginner. Just about everyone has had cursive writing brained into their skulls by the age of 12, so cursive “f’s” should be no trouble. Just think of your needle like a pencil and your quilt like your paper and “write” to your heart’s content.

Design Family – Edge to Edge.

Directional Texture – All directions with a catch. Look back at the example. See how the lines of “f’s” stack on top of one another? This creates lines that your eyes will catch when skimming across a quilt.

Of course this wouldn’t matter if it was an expanded free motion designs stitched over the whole surface of the quilt, but if you put this in the background of a wholecloth, it’s going to show.

Suggestions for Use – Because of the lines, I personally don’t think that the “Fooffy” design works well over a large area. Instead, I believe this free motion stitch will look terrific in small, tight areas like flowers, stems, and leaves.

This would also look awesome as the trim along the last 1/2″ of a quilt right before the binding or along the sleeves and cuffs of a quilted jacket.

Feel free to use this free motion filler designs in your quilts and make sure to tell your friends where you learned it at! Click here to support the project by visiting our online quilt shop.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day