Quilting Design #7 – Echo Rainbow

Yesterday we learned about Echo Shell, and how to make it look both random and natural. Today for day 7 we’re going to learn about Echo Rainbow, a more structured free motion quilting filler.

As you can see this filler uses wide, half circle shapes that are echo stitched with multiple rays each. This gives each half circle the look of fat rainbows. Because they’re stacked like bricks on top of one another, these fillers appear much more regimented than the random patterns created by Echo Shell.

Learn how to quilt Echo Rainbow:

Inspiration – The cover of the book Quilts of Provence again played an important role in designing this free motion quilting stitch. It just goes to show that one picture, image, object, painting, or sculpture can inspire multiple stitching designs and motifs.

The sky really is the limit!

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. These rainbows are very easy to stitch so long as you maintain the same distance from your previous stitching as you echo back and forth. The difficulty is in travel stitching to the areas you need to quilt and stacking the rainbows perfectly together.

Design Family – Echoing.

Directional Texture – This is another 3 direction filler. Like Echo Shells, you can definitely tell where you start with this filler because it’s almost like your horizon line. For this reason, it’s a great sky or border filler, but probably not the best to fill in blocks around appliques where you really want more movement from all directions.

Suggestions for Use – Sky and borders! If you were into quilted clothing, this would also look great as the filler going up a jacket.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day