Day 155 – Heart Flower

Anybody else craving some new free motion designs? Me too!

Here’s a new design using hearts called Heart Flower. I feel like I really haven’t experimented with hearts nearly as much as spirals, so I’m trying to play with them more often.

Today I’m taking it easy getting ready for my workshop and lecture on Thursday. This will be the first time I’ve taught filler designs in person, so I’m pretty excited about that!

The hardest part is figuring out which filler designs to teach. With 155 designs to choose from, picking 10 is pretty difficult.

So while I stare at my books of designs hoping for divine inspiration, enjoy learning how to stitch Heart Flower:

Inspiration – I love playing with different signs and symbols in quilting. Hearts, spirals, stars, numbers, and letters all make for great free motion designs.

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. This is not a very hard design, but it does require a lot of traveling and thread buildup, so just make sure you’re using a thin, strong thread when you quilt it.

Design Family – Center Fill. This design is started in the center of your quilting space and worked to the outside. This does require breaking your thread to get into the center, but the effect is totally worth the hiding the extra threads.

Directional Texture – Center Focused. I love this style of design because it create almost a bulls-eye effect on your quilt. All the attention and focus is driven right to the center of the design.

Suggestions for Use – This design is stitched really small in this sample, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only way you can stitch it! I’d try expanding this over a 12″ block and see what the texture does then.