Day 277 – Rockin’

Pebbling is one of the most popular free motion quilting designs, largely because it creates such a gorgeous, eye catching texture on the surface of your quilt and it’s SO easy to quilt around complex areas.

I started thinking about this design and if it’s possible to stitch it with straight lines and sharp angles. This would be kind of like exchanging the circles for hexagons and pentagons. Turns out this creates a cool, Rockin’ texture:

It is heating up! The weather is really feeling like summer now and Josh and I have both decided we need to hurry up with our outdoor patio project, otherwise it’s going to be a miserable job finishing it in the heat.

This morning I dug up the rest of the soil out of the patch and for the rest of the day I’ll be leveling the area and maybe laying the first castle wall around the garden.

While I’m not much of a gardener, I love building patios and small raised gardens with stone. It’s actually really easy to do with simple tools (a small hammer, level, string, and two sticks), and it looks amazing when you’re finished.

So while I run upstairs to find my hat and sunscreen, let’s get back to Rockin’!

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. I found this design to be a bit tricky, mostly because I’m so used to Pebbling and making smooth, circular shapes fit together perfectly. However, as soon as I started thinking in terms of hexagons, pentagons, and octagons, things got a bit easier.

Design Family – Stacking. This design is formed by stacking sharp angled shapes together one by one around your quilting space. Because of the way it’s stitched, this can really go anywhere on your quilt and on any scale!

Directional Texture – No Direction. Rockin’ appears very flat and directionless, much like a reptile’s scales or a gravel driveway. Use this design where you want the quilt to recede rather than stand out.

Suggestions for Use – Desert landscape anyone? How about a quilt with an iguana or dragon on it? Rockin’ would be the perfect design to show a stony, cracked desert wasteland, or the soft scales of a lizard.