Day 342 – Sawblades

It’s a beautiful, chilly fall day and Josh and I are heading out of town to the Carolina Renaissance Festival. If we decide to pay a few dollars and take the Dungeon Tour, we might just see a few grisly implements of torture like these Sawblades!

It’s funny, when I was in high school, I imagined I would one day work at Renaissance festival. I loved everything about reenacting, but just never got into it. Maybe I should return to that fantasy and try my hand at stitching a Elizabethan style quilted dress, corset, and skirt?

While Sawblades might not sound like a fitting design for such a garment, when stitched around the hem or trim of a garment, these swirling circles will look really nice. Let’s see how it’s quilted:

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. This design is a variation of Pebbling, so if you’d like to get some practice, first stitch a very large scale Pebbling over a large area of your quilt. Then when you start feeling bored stitching only circles, start filling them with simple curves to finish off the Sawblades.

Design Family – Stacking. Circular shapes stack together very easily! Don’t worry about every little space being filled. Instead focus on stitching the circles big and, well, circular. Try to avoid wiggly, wobbly amoeba shapes!

Directional Texture – No Direction. When designs stack together like bricks, they tend to have the same texture as a brick wall – rather flat and backgroundish. That doesn’t mean it’s ugly! It just means this would be a great choice for a large background space in your next quilt.

Suggestions for Use – I like the idea of using Sawblades over a big quilt, with each circular shape around 4 to 5 inches across. This huge version of Sawblades would certainly be a lot of fun to stitch and would definitely create a unique texture for that quilt!