Day 81 – Lollipop Chain

This design is also featured in the DVD Beginner Free Motion Quilting Fillers, as well as the ebook From Daisy to Paisley.

Okay! I’ve finally managed to get my act together and am ready to start a new series of designs. Here’s a sweet inspired design called Lollipop Chain:

I really like posting the quilt design suggestions, but I still really want this blog to be about inventing new free motion quilting designs.

Some days I feel like a real cop-out for not posting a design daily. I actually was looking at the calendar the other day seeing if I could catch up on the day we’re supposed to be on.

For the record we should be on day 85, so I’ve really not fallen that far behind. One side of me knows I need days off occasionally and the other side of me knows that I would really like this project to finish in 365 days.

So the next several days will be devoted to new designs. I’ve also got some great tutorial videos coming on things like Organizing Your Fabric, Marking Your Quilt Top, and Designing Quilting Motifs. I’ll let you know when those are done.

It makes be sound so efficient to also say that Free Motion Fillers Volume 2 is almost done! Thanks to everyone for participating in the poll I’ve had up on the sidebar.

While I know that everyone wants DVDs and Workbooks of all of the designs from this project, I’ve instead decided to just make DVDs up to Volume 5.

The DVDs are just so time consuming and require so much work that it really takes away from the fun parts of this project for me. It’s also hard to imagine everyone buying 18 DVDs at $30 each.

Five DVDs would make for 100 designs, which is probably the most any normal person (yes, I’m the freak that wants 300) would want to quilt with.

I’m still planning on making workbooks of all 365 designs (18 workbooks total) and at the very end, maybe a year after the project is done, I will self-publish the complete Free Motion Filler Project book.

So now that we’re all on the same page, let’s get back to Lollipop Chain:

Inspiration – I was thinking about the success of Coffee Beans and how popular that design was. Was it the design or the fact that is was based on a food item?

I decided to put it to the test! I figure lollipops should be just as popular as coffee, though they don’t provide nearly the same wonderful caffeine buzz.

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. This is really a pretty easy design. The biggest challenge will lie in quilting the circle shapes evenly and then filling them with the concentric circles.

Don’t bother trying to make the circles totally full of quilting lines. It looks better to leave them a bit open.

Design Family – Independent. This design is pretty similar to Tree Roots and Stippling so you can pretty much use it anywhere in your quilt.

You might want to watch it around complicated quilting motifs though because the lollipop circles might be hard to stitch in really small places.

Directional Texture – No Direction. This is a fairly flat design, but it’s also very attention getting. The texture it creates is hard to ignore, so make sure you place it where you want lots of attention!

Suggestions for Use – Have you seen Amy Butler’s new fabric collection yet? “Love” is absolutely gorgeous prints that are bright and cheerful without being over-the-top.

I think Lollipop Chain would look great paired with this fabric line. Maybe stitch this in the sashing around big, bright blocks for a sweet, happy time quilt.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

How to Organize Your Fabric